The previous reviewer, view and review, pretty much summed up my feelings on this dreary, sexist exercise but I want to be on record as loathing this thing, and to do that I need 600 characters, so here are some random thoughts:
1) I'm always struck when a pre code film like this one pushes the sex envelope but fits quite neatly into the sexist one.
2) You can talk about your gangsters, juvenile delinquents, Nazis and heartless plutocrats but when it comes to durable, long lasting and reliable villains in 1930s and 40s Hollywood nothing quite beats the Powerful Unmarried Working Woman. She is, invariably, killed off, slapped around, or, as here, humiliated (i.e the film's single most nauseating scene where Ms. Drake breaks down and admits that she cannot run her business the way a man can). It wasn't until Katherine Hepburn kicked in the chauvinist doors a bit in "Woman Of The Year" that things began very tentatively to change.
3) In the film's final scene George Brent tells Ruth Chatterton he wants nine kids and she smiles, acquiescently. In real life they had none. And were divorced after two years. Something comforting in that.
4) Some nice shots of the Frank Lloyd Wright house in the Hollywood Hills. That and Ms. Chatterton's smile are the only things that save this abomination from a 3 rating. Give it a C minus.
1) I'm always struck when a pre code film like this one pushes the sex envelope but fits quite neatly into the sexist one.
2) You can talk about your gangsters, juvenile delinquents, Nazis and heartless plutocrats but when it comes to durable, long lasting and reliable villains in 1930s and 40s Hollywood nothing quite beats the Powerful Unmarried Working Woman. She is, invariably, killed off, slapped around, or, as here, humiliated (i.e the film's single most nauseating scene where Ms. Drake breaks down and admits that she cannot run her business the way a man can). It wasn't until Katherine Hepburn kicked in the chauvinist doors a bit in "Woman Of The Year" that things began very tentatively to change.
3) In the film's final scene George Brent tells Ruth Chatterton he wants nine kids and she smiles, acquiescently. In real life they had none. And were divorced after two years. Something comforting in that.
4) Some nice shots of the Frank Lloyd Wright house in the Hollywood Hills. That and Ms. Chatterton's smile are the only things that save this abomination from a 3 rating. Give it a C minus.