Synopsis
Is love the enemy of all women?
A lovely fashion model's dreams of marital bliss are shattered when her fiance jilts her. To make matters worse, her father kills the cad and she gets accused of the crime.
1933 Directed by Erle C. Kenton
A lovely fashion model's dreams of marital bliss are shattered when her fiance jilts her. To make matters worse, her father kills the cad and she gets accused of the crime.
An amazing pre-code crime-drama with a compelling central performance by the always reliable Helen Twelvetrees as a fashion model who is taken in by a cad who promises to marry her but reneges after he's gotten everything he wants out of her. So, when her policeman father discovers what has been done to her, things take a startling turn. It's another 1930s film dealing with the subject of a woman's honor, but it does things in a wholly original way that I haven't seen replicated in other films from the era. It also has a terrific cliffhanger of an ending that was surprising and perfectly satisfying in an unusual way. It just felt exactly right, even as it may be…
I watched this for Helen Twelvetrees, who was so lovely. I was a little surprised at some of the developments when I shouldn't have been. It is a pre-code film after all. Plus, there is the title!
I think this is the best acting I've seen from Bruce Cabot. He was much more natural in this. There was a little hokiness as things were building to the climax but I liked the ending.
Working as a model in a high-fashion clothes store means that Gay Holloway (Helen Twelvetrees) comes into contact with regular customer Julia Thorndyke (Adrienne Ames), a beautiful, wealthy woman who is set to marry eligible bachelor Kirk Underwood (Bruce Cabot). Kirk takes a bit of a shine to our Gay. Not that Julia is bothered, she’s well aware of his wandering eye and the little ‘trinkets’ he frequently picks up (and quickly discards).
And Gay… Gay by name, gay by nature – a cheerful soul who enjoys her job because it allows her to meet new, interesting people and dress up in clothes that she can only dream of affording. She lives with her father, a police captain (played by…
Delightful.
7/10.
Getting ready to meet family on New Year’s Day,I decided to choose a film we could watch. With this title having sat in the “Must watch” pile for some time, it felt like the perfect moment, for a disgraced viewing.
View on the film:
Gliding up Gay’s legs as she shows off the latest fashion, director Erle C. Kenton & Journey Into Fear (1943-also reviewed) cinematographer Karl Struss dress the tale in an immaculate, ultra-stylized fashion of long, gliding dolly shots which contrast the high-end clothes Gay models with her humble surroundings, crane shots displaying the bustling city life, and rapid-fire crash zooms landing on the shaky relationship between Gay and her police officer dad Holloway.
Just one of…
Helen Twelvetrees is grueling sexy in this, but this drama where she plays a used woman is too limited in it's writing to become more then a forgotten piece moralistic drivel. Bruce Cabot as the player is quite good, so is Adrienne Ames, but I felt William Harrigan in the role of the father was a poor one and since so much of the emotion relied on him it becomes a dud in the end. However there are moments where this explores a deeper sense of storytelling, but the all-important climax was not one of those moments.