|
A joke early on registers the friendly rivalry between theater and cinema, Romeo and Juliet is up in neon lights while the matriarch (Henrietta Crosman) snaps at the younger medium ("All talking, all color... all terrible"). Thespians carry their melodramas around with them, all the diva (Ina Claire) wants is to retire and settle down with her businessman beau (Frank Conroy). The scalawag brother (Fredric March) has gone to Hollywood, his homecoming is carefully placed with his back to the audience until the eminent profile is revealed from under fur coat and fedora. Scandal rages outside, what's a family to do? "Blood's a little thicker than usual today." Double performances of actors-as-actors are already George Cukor's forte, with Cyril Gardner's support he establishes the proscenium and then pulls it this way and that. March at his most buoyant makes his way to the mansion's shower and the camera follows him up the staircase as he drops zingers and pieces of clothing. (The movement is later reversed as he descends the steps while practicing a bit of fencing with the servants.) "Not a quiet moment in this house," little sister (Mary Brian) wants out of the limelight but mother misses the "greasepaint, rouge, mascara," Claire presides over it all with a polished sense of mischief. Drawing rooms with divans and fireplaces and throngs of bellboys popping in and out, a snapshot of early-sound staginess energized by Cukor's verve. "Takes more than that to kill a movie director." The rising curtain at the close reappears in A Star Is Born, and La Signora senza camelie. With Charles Starrett, Arnold Korff, and Lucile Watson. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |