1933: Female

Female (Michael Curtiz; William Dieterle; William Wellman; 1933) 7/10

During the pre-Code era of the early 1930's, Hollywood studios cultivated an array of fast-paced pictures drenched in sin, sex and vice. Depression-era audiences flocked to their local theatres to witness the latest taboo-pushing motion picture featuring hyper-sexual dames, gun-toting gangsters and the frenzied spectacle brought on by illicit drinking, prostitution, narcotic use and racketeering. The popularity of these tawdry tales kept Hollywood afloat during the Depression, but also brought the wrath of religious and state censorship boards.

One of the most daring and controversial pictures to emerge in this period was a sixty-minute film entitled Female: a novel work about the escapades of Allison Drake, a sexually vivacious female industrialist played by Ruth Chatterton. Having bequeathed her father's automobile plant through his will, Allison decides to run the plant herself. But Allison is not just a pretty face.

Punctual, efficient, intelligent and demanding, Allison expects her employees to follow her example of unrelenting professionalism and hard work. Adorned in masculinized attire and well-versed in the industry, Allison intimidates her male employees with her seemingly cold and unfeminine exterior, as she aggressively attempts to save her father's fledgling company. Unknown to the majority of her employees, she is not all work and no play. Her discreet invitations to conduct one-on-one business meetings at her spacious, art-deco home soon materialize to be far more sensual than professional affairs.

In these sequences Chatterton's character embodies the spirit of Catherine The Great. Like the famed Russian Czarina, Allison is equipped with both masculine gendered conceptions of leadership and a vigorous sexual appetite. In yearning to deal with men in a manner analogous to how men have treated women, Allison uses her power and seductive skills to utilize men less as 'household necessities' and more like pets. Her pillow strewn floor and crude electronic gadgetry enable her to entice men with vodka-fuelled sessions, before quickly dropping them from her roster the next day.

Marriage is not in the cards for Allison centrally because unlike many other women of her era, she is not financially dependent on men. Rather, her lurid affairs offer her the physical elements found in marriage through a brand of expedient satisfaction that is wholly without commitment. Repulsed by the willingness of men to believe sex equals love, Allison runs a crushingly swift program of elimination. When men do try to shower their affections upon her, Allison either ignores them or exiles them to other branches of her international empire. Allison even incorporates a system of salaried performance bonuses to pay for the additional 'labour' her male employees have exerted.

Subsequently, it was the combination of Allison's pre-marital affairs and willingness to compensate her workers for their sexual endeavours, which drew the ire of censors in the mid-Thirties and resulted in the picture being banned indefinitely until the Production Code's demise in the 1950's. Allison's liberalized sexual practices are performed without any regard for psychological burdens or notions of romance. The latter emerges in Female as a factor despised by the film's cynical and realistic protagonist, who shuns romance for its falsehoods and hyperbolic acts of flattery.

In one particularly striking scene, Allison ultimately shuns intercourse with a young artist, because of his repeated assertions of her divine status: proclaiming that she is "a goddess" basking in the heavenly atmosphere of her palatial estate with its church-like organ, extensive white walls and modern art statues.

The concept of duality and duplicity emerges as two key themes in Female. The film's repeated use of mirrors presents a concept of Allison having two sides: opposing personalities concurrently working in tandem. A masculine side is ever-present in the workplace as witnessed through her demanding demeanor and unisexual clothing. Although the masculine elements are present in the film's period ideals of sexual appetite, they are draped within sexually alluring female attire: seductive thin dresses and perfectly coiffured features.

The film's reversal of gender roles fizzles in the latter stages of Female when Allison becomes enchanted by the company's new engineer Jim Thorne (George Brent). Unlike her other male playthings, Jim is not interested in neither her money nor her sexuality. Preferring civilian work to animalistic hunting for sexual prey, Jim becomes the one entity, the omnipotent and predatory Allison cannot sink her claws into. Rather than relinquish Jim, Allison decides to win over him by playing the game: the marriage game that is.

Her subsequent actions in Female's final moments become an embarrassing farce in contrast to the film's overarching progressive ideals and sentiments. Regurgitating to a state of female stereotypes and clichés, Allison's sang froid interior cracks in a bevy of tear-soaked hysteria, yearnings to recede into a domesticated world and desires to leave the world of business to men. The closing onslaught of images including a bizarre, dreamlike picnic sequence border on the surreal. Like the memories of courtship in Alfred Hitchcock's I, Confess, this sequence in its unabashedly romantic flavour could possibly be ascertained as a mere dream, if it was not for the film's redundant finale in which Allison symbolically allows Jim to take the driver's seat in her luxury convertible.

Female was initially began by German emigre William Dieterle, who was replaced by William Wellman after the former fell ill. When Jack Warner disapproved of the actor playing one of Allison's early love interests in the film, the picture was then handed over to Michael Curtiz who, re-shot those scenes with a new actor Johnny Mack Brown and, ended up with final credit for the film. Bolstered by a brilliant, authentic lead performance by Ruth Chatterton alongside her then husband George Brent, Female still remains a feisty, groundbreaking film, which is only crippled by its regressive stance on gender in the film's closing scenes.

*Female is available on DVD exclusively through Warner Home Video's TCM Archives: Forbidden Hollywood Collection Vol. 2

Copyright 2008 8½ Cinematheque

1932: Three On A Match

Three On A Match (LeRoy, 1932) 6/10

In her autobiography, Bette Davis referred to it as “a dull B picture,” while the New York Times called it “tedious and distasteful.” Yet, in the seventy-five years since its initial release, Mervyn Le Roy’s Three On A Match has garnered a cult status as one of the most exploitative and controversial films of its era for its overt promiscuity, drug use and crude imagery.

The film’s title is derived from a superstition popularly believed to have existed during the First World War, but in actuality devised by a post-war Swedish industrialist to sell more matches. According to the myth, if three soldiers lit their respective cigarettes from the same single match, then one of the three would die. This idea is neatly incorporated into LeRoy’s diminutive 64 minute film, when three distant friends decide to share a match during their reunion.

Featuring a cast including a slew of then-unknown actors who later became stars, the film centers around the evolving friendship between three women from childhood to adulthood. After going their separate paths following elementary school, the group unexpectedly re-unites at a New York restaurant and begins to discuss their divergent lives.

Over lunch both Mary (Joan Blondell), a former juvenile delinquent turned showgirl and Ruth (Bette Davis), an academically gifted, but underprivileged woman forced to work as a stenographer enviously pine for the life of the popular and wealthy Vivian (Ann Dvorak). Married to prominent lawyer Robert Kirkwood (Warren William) and having a small child (Buster Phelps), Vivian appears to have it all: money, security and family.

Unbeknownst to both Mary and Ruth, Vivian is also crushingly bored by her existence. Unsatisfied by her marriage, Vivian plans an unaccompanied trip to Europe with her husband’s consent in the hope that the break will rekindle her interest. However, prior to departing for Cherbourg, Vivian falls heavily for a slick Manhattan playboy (Lyle Talbot) during an evening party. Disembarking with her young son, Vivian takes flight from her husband and enters into a destructive world of sex, gangsters, narcotics and alcoholism.

Barely running sixty-four minutes long, Three On A Match is a deliriously trashy boudoir of cinematic sin. Featuring a cast including Joan Blondell, Ann Dvorak, Bette Davis and Humphrey Bogart, Three On A Match is a wicked parable on the transformative effects of time. Utilizing stock footage and recurring glances at timepieces, the subject of time is expressly recounted throughout LeRoy’s film. Newspaper headlines become dualistic devices: escorting the viewer to the major events of the period, but also as examples to metaphorically describe the changing socio-cultural ideas affecting the film’s protagonists.

In locating his protagonists within a rapidly modifying environment, LeRoy is able to establish the internal alterations within the personalities of his characters. No more so than in the film’s central character Vivian, who is initially, presented as a “goody-two shoes,” but is subtly revealed to have a repressed sexual element: a fact evident in her nightly surreptitious perusals of tawdry, sexually explicit novels at boarding school.

The ability to change from good-to-bad and vice-versa is at the cornerstone of LeRoy’s film: enabling Vivian to regress into a drunken wastrel, whilst allowing Mary to develop from a reform school brat into a successful, good-hearted woman. In contrast to the female characters in George Cukor's The Women released seven years later, the women in Three On A Match display a complex range of emotions that are genuine in their content and intricacy. Nevertheless in strictly emphasizing the opposing paths undertaken by Mary and Vivian, the character of Ruth suffers immensely and quickly becomes an overlooked and undeveloped figure.

In connection to Bette Davis’ wasted performance, LeRoy’s film also suffers from one its principal thematic attributes: time. Packed into a sixty-four minute framework, LeRoy’s film offers scant breathing space in its clutter of visual aides memoire that dominate the film’s first half. In contrast to its stolid build-up, the film’s second portion is a frenzied, scandalous affair.

Exploiting its pre-Code conditions, the latter stages of Three On A Match contain a cavalcade of illicit ideas and brazen images including child neglect, cocaine use, extramarital affairs, kidnapping, extortion and an otherworldly suicide. It is in these moments that Dvorak and Bogart, as an unrepentant gangster, demonstrate their talent. The former’s spiraling descent from jaded socialite to a ghostlike addict is particularly riveting; the latter in his first thuggish role snarls and seethes his way to the forefront in a small performance that includes a particularly memorable swipe at Dvorak’s addictions and a scaly reaction to her son’s pleas for her to be left unharmed.

Featuring a wealth of controversial material, Three On A Match is a raw and audacious "B" picture. Filled with a trio of strong performanaces (Blondell, Bogart, Dvorak), Three On A Match exhibited Mervyn LeRoy's ability to create gritty contemporary pictures with minimal refinements or pleasantries. Although nowhere near as consistent as his best films (Little Caesar and I Am A Fugitive On A Chain Gang also released in 1932) Three On A Match is still an enjoyable and riveting picture more than three quarters of a century after its initial release.

* Three On A Match is available on DVD exclusively through Warner Home Video's TCM Archives: Forbidden Hollywood Collection Vol. 2

Copyright 2008 8½ Cinematheque

1939: The Women

The Women (Cukor, 1939) 6/10

The one-sheet tagline for George Cukor's 1939 film The Women declared 'It's all about men!" Yet, throughout the course of Cukor's 133 minute melodrama, there is not a single masculine presence visible. Furthermore, despite having an entirely female cast featuring some of the biggest stars of the period, it is the topic of men that dominates the proceedings through hearsay, third-party gossip and the rare off-screen appearance.

Before Sex and the City monopolized the superficial plight of the modern Manhattan socialite, there was The Women. Released by MGM in 1939 and shot by famed ‘women’s director’ George Cukor, The Women is an archetypal example of MGM's high production values during the 1930's. Taken from a play by Clare Booth Luce, the film centers on a group of catty and shallow high-society women who are as eager to backstab one another, as they are to indulge in sherry-filled fashion shows and afternoon tea parties.

The crux of the film details the collapse of Mary Haines' (Norma Shearer) marriage to Stephen Haines, the latter having absconded his marital vows to embark on an illicit affair with snarling working-class perfume saleswoman Crystal Allen (Joan Crawford). Unbeknownst to Mary, this information has been spread without her knowledge throughout her Park Avenue social circuit by her garrulous cousin Sylvia (Rosalind Russell). After crushingly hearing the news via a talkative manicurist, Mary leaves Stephen and heads to a ranch in Reno, where along with other divorcees she must decided whether her pride is more important than her marriage.

Adapted by pioneering female screenwriters Anita Loos and Jane Murfin, The Women is mostly a callous and throughly bitchy affair. Despite its projections of aristocratic sophistication, The Women features waves of snappy dialogue drenched in sexual innuendo and vitriolic assaults quite unbecoming for MGM's output during the period. Besides its physical exclusion of the male sex, The Women is also particularly interesting for its conceptualization of "the modern woman."

Mary Haines certainly considers herself to be a progressive character and avoids the recommendations of her mother to act obliviously toward Stephen's indiscretions. Nevertheless, Mary's supposed liberal mindset is rarely applied with conviction throughout the film: resulting in a rather regressive portrayal of womanhood. Although characters exist from each class bracket in Cukor's film, it is the upper-class figures who are garnered the majority of the film's attention. Subsequently, a skewed upper-class definition of contemporary femininity emerges that today appears volatile, negative and rooted in stereotypes.

The women in The Women are primarily portrayed as solely interested in gossip, money, fashion and physical fitness, the latter purely for sexual purposes. Scarcely any of the women are employed and even fewer are educated at a tertiary level. Any progressive attempts toward gender solidarity are also non-existent in the film. The rigidity of class relations takes precedence in their lives, as evidenced when Sylvia appears to take greater offense to Stephen having an affair with Crawford's Crystal for the clerk's social rank, rather than the act itself.

With little personal socio-economic freedom separate from their husbands, yet an abundance of leisure time, the film's characters tend to take an unhealthy interest in their friends' private lives. Their leisure time is not devoted to a pursuit of the liberal arts, but rather engaging in the art of liberally pursuing each other's dirt, secrets, lies and scandals. For several of the characters in The Women, pleasure appears to be obtained more so from the anguish of others, rather than personal development.

Consequently, the examination of feminine identity and gender-related struggles in The Women intrinsically follows a singular track. Maternalism is given preference over careerism, as Cukor's film tends to laud Shearer's doting mother. The latter's progressive 'feminism' is aggressively gnawed away by the film's insistent unspoken idea that dependence and loyalty is greater than independence and pride. Often the film tends to characterize women as petty, hysterical, chatty, irrational and primal: no more so than the film's zoological-themed opening credits delineating a corresponding animal for each character.

In casting the film in its initial moments as an animalistic menagerie, the film underscores the rare outlets for power available to its protagonists. In the concrete jungles of Manhattan, survival is obtained through uncouth alliances and marital usurpation. In trying to manipulate their surroundings or re-invent themselves, several characters in the The Women attempt to address the imbalance of power between the genders and the fetishized and sexualized commodification of their sex.

Nevertheless, feminine power in Cukor's film is a device limited to the female community which adheres to its own racial, class and socio-political prejudices. With limited options for personal socio-economic growth, the male animal becomes vital for the women in the film. The failure to transcend the autonomy of their gendered environment results in characters like Mary Haines capitulating to the status quo: as her defiant resistance to her husband's immoral actions relinquishes toward a passive acceptance of her position.

In spite of Cukor's reputation as a 'women's director,' the adherence to patriarchal and conservative values is at the cornerstone of The Women. It is this advancement of male domination which perhaps sits most uncomfortably in Cukor's purportedly 'feminist' film. One certainly has to wonder had the film been made deeper into the Second World War, when women performed a greater role on the homefront, would Cukor's film have retained the same glowing appraisal of male dominance.

Recently remade by Murphy Brown creator Diane English, The Women still retains its classic status, despite its increasingly waning critical stature. Although some critics have posited Cukor's film as a comedy or a satire, the film places far too much in the melodramatic plight of its central heroine to conform into any strict comedic classification. The performances range in divergent standards with Shearer's overwrought cuckold aging poorly, whilst Crawford's conniving temptress maturing into a fine flavour. Nevertheless it is in the snappy, fork-tongued dialogue of Loos and Murfin's script that The Women briefly exceeds the overcooked melodramatics of Cukor's direction in an otherwise clichéd and dated ensemble film

*The Women is released by Warner Home Video and is available in their Joan Crawford Collection Vol. 1

Copyright 2008 8½ Cinematheque