• Merrily We Go to Hell

5/22/23 (Mon)

A pre-code 1932 film that deals with daring themes for its time like adultery and alcoholism, but not very well. As in many of these films, it features upper-crust society with impossibly glamorous mansions, gorgeous clothing and an endless supply of alcohol in defiance of Prohibition. Dorothy Arzner, the only significant female director in those days and an open lesbian (as if being female in itself wasn’t hard enough), clearly wanted to be scandalous, as the controversial title itself suggests. But she should have found a better script to hang it on.

A journalist (Frederic March) with a weakness for the bottle meets an heiress (a very good Sylvia Sidney) at a sophisticated party. She is taken by him despite his inebriated state and eventually marries him, ignoring the protestations of her clear-eyed father and plenty of warning signs, like the picture of an old flame, a famous actress, still hanging just above March’s desk and his failure to show up at the engagement party. At the wedding, he forgets the ring and improvises with a corkscrew, showing where his real sympathies lie.

March is a weak character who never bounced back from being burned by that old flame and is more concerned with his freedom than the obligations of marriage. Still, the marriage seems to work at first as the heiress manages to keep him off the bottle while he writes plays. They are joyful when, after many rejections, one is finally optioned by a big NY producer. The catch: it will star the woman who dumped him years ago. The play succeeds, but not before March has fallen back into alcohol and an affair with the actress. This prompts a transformation in his despairing wife from a mild virtuous housewife to a playgirl of her own, declaring that he’s not the only one who deserves to play the field (and snaring no less than a young Cary Grant). The film wraps up in melodrama of the most sappy kind, including an entirely out-of-place turn to tragedy. The lovers end up together in a conclusion that is nowhere remotely believable.

A witty line slips through every now and then (“He’s still alive, but a couple of bottles of scotch are dead” “As a rule I prefer the company of men – particularly if they’re bartenders”), but the script as a whole is dull. Sidney and especially Adrianne Allen as the actress/former lover are fine, but the acting overall is not the film’s strong point. Actually, the film has no strong points. I can see why it was a sensation in its day given the debauchery it was portraying, which must have thrilled Depression-era audiences looking for fun, but it has not aged well. The best of the pre-code films like Trouble with Paradise and The Thin Man had sparkling scripts that made their stories beside the point. No such luck here. Not recommended.