New Morals for Old

Phyl and her brother Ralph's bedroom play is so 30s flirty;) The Paris goodbye kiss is so smoldering hot. Tennessee Williams would love this so forbidden sexiness. The screenplay was based on the play "After All" by John Van Druten, author of "I Am A Camera" which was the basis of the musical "Cabaret". (I wonder what was left on the editing room floor.) What happened with Myra? There so many unanswered questions raised that it is not truly as predictable as it seems. All in all I consider it more of naughty tease. I was glad I could fast forward what was most totally predictable...and enjoy the fun of the queerness of it "After All".

After watching "New Morals for Old", I was left wondering just what was the point of this movie. I really am not sure....and wonder if the writer was equally undecided!

The film concerns a family of rich folks who seem to have way too much money and way too much time on their hands. Although the father (Lewis Stone) worked to make his fortune, his kids (Robert Young and Margaret Perry) seem like spoiled and rather amoral jerks. The son wants to run off to Paris to become a painter and the daughter wants to sleep with a married man. While the parents can't understand this sort of behavior, in this very permissive family, they really don't say much of anything about this. Eventually, the father dies and the son finally takes off to paint. And,...well, there really isn't much more to the film.

The film MIGHT be saying that a new, selfish and permissive age is coming or it might have tried saying that the parents were just old fashioned and behind the times--but I can't be sure. The movie seemed to take an amoral approach--showing the kids' behaviors in a very direct and non-judgmental manner. Well, I might have felt that was okay for the son but the film had a definite Pre-Code attitude about adultery, that's for sure. The bottom line is that I objected far less to the kids' actions and more that there was no sort of point to any of this...none.

Lewis Stone and Laura Hope Crewes are a couple of old fuddy-duddies. They worry about their children, Robert Young and Margaret Perry. They seem to spend all their time in speakeasies, and Young doesn't pay attention to business as he ought to. Then Stone dies, and Young busts loose in Paris, intent on becoming a painter, and meeting exotic Myrna Loy, who turns out to be American. Miss Perry brings home a man, and Miss Crewes suggests separate bedrooms, for propriety's sake. They say no.

In title and attitudes, this is pretty much a pre-code movie, but being MGM, and based on a play by John van Druten, is it going to be as wild as it sounds at the beginning? This is pretty much second-string MGM, with Young announcing he wants to run barefoot through Miss Loy's hair. Well, who can blame him?

There was a young man who was in two scenes in this movie that is uncredited, and I am trying to find out who he was. He had lines in both of his scenes. He appears first in the scene where Robert Young's character arrives in Paris at the art studio, just as the class is ending. The character/actor I am asking about was introduced as George Macintosh. He is short, young, dark haired, quite handsome, smiles a lot, and introduces Robert Young to the disinterested head of the art studio.

The generation gap in 1932.Two retired people see their children (a boy and a girl) turn their back on mom's nice rice pudding and want to marry a divorcée (the girl) and to go and study art in Paris (the boy).

All in all ,neither the obsolete precepts of the old nor the modern way of life of the young are satisfying .Travel broadens the mind ,for sure,but when your talent is mediocre ,the best of art professors cannot do anything for you ,even if he teaches (or is supposed to) in French.And it's almost probable that the two rebels will become their parents without a sound.The last pictures glorify Family with a capital F.