We watched that movie last night. "Three on a Match" — selected from from The Criterion Channel's collection, "Pre-Code Divas."
What a crazy movie! I'll avoid spoilers and just say: 1. Fantastic example of a woman who cannot be satisfied with conventional married life (even with wealth and a fine lawyer-husband), 2. Shades of "Reefer Madness," 3. Only 63 minutes long, 4. Who knew there was a boy version of Shirley Temple? 5. Don't expect to see much of Bette Davis, 6. Brief but great shots of Humphrey Bogart, 7. Loved the sad piano playing in the girl's reform school, 8. Don't reveal the shocking ending! 9. Inventive method of communicating with the police, 10. I love the pre-Code era, 11. Made me want to watch more Ann Dvorak movies.
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38 comments:
Pre Code Maltese Falcon was a ton of fun, and closer to the books, IMO.
YouTube: Wes Anderson on pre-code Hollywood and his November TMC movie picks
I’ve only recently started discovering and enjoying some of the films from the pre-code era. I used to never be able to sit still for any of these movies because of how the camera moves, or rather its lack of movement. My entryway was some of the original Universal horror movies where they are able to create a mood and atmosphere through things like shadow, costumes and set design. I checked out a few of those and am now more accustomed to the overall pace of these films including the style of characters, the way they talk, etc…
Please post more pre-code recommendations as they come to you.
TV Soap Opera cave painting?
Leonard Maltin gives the film three out of four stars, describing it as a “Fine, fast-moving (and surprisingly potent) pre-Code melodrama of three girls who renew childhood friendship, only to find suspense and tragedy. Dvorak is simply marvelous.”
Dvorak was a good actress who was taken advantage by Warner Brothers (surprise). She got paid the same amount of money as the child actor. went freelance and her career went south.
Blondell and Davis had incredible range, good to see them when they were younger.
"YouTube: Wes Anderson on pre-code Hollywood and his November TMC movie picks."
Thanks. He recommends "Baby Face" which is one of the 16 movies in the Criterion "pre-code divas" collection and the one in that set that my son John recommends most strongly.
He also recommends "Design for Living," which was one of my favorite movies from everything I watched during my college years and which I have watched again recently. Absolutely love it. And I want to watch it again because I have newfound love for Frederic March because I recently watched "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde," which was in Criterion's pre-Code Horror collection.
Of the pre-Code Horror collection, I also just watched "Freaks," "Island of Lost Souls," and "The Black Cat." All well worth watching, though the worst of those is "The Black Cat." I think "The Black Cat" can be enjoyed if you forget about understanding what's going on and listen to the music and drink in the visuals.
And I started to watch "Mystery of the Wax Museum."
Kay said...
"I am now more accustomed to the way they talk"
The Day White People Stopped Being Cool: "Meh."
"I think "The Black Cat" can be enjoyed if you forget about understanding what's going on and listen to the music and drink in the visuals."
Is that like drinking in your underwear?
Thanks for the recommendations. I started Criterion’s Con Game series. My first view was Trouble in Paradise(1932) with Miriam Hopkins and Herbert Marshall. I didn’t read the description of the film which ruins the beginning (in my opinion). Very enjoyable - especially if you don’t read the description (have I stressed that enough).
Another surprising one is Primrose Path, about a family of call girls. Not a great movie, leads are miscast, but very realistic. Great character actors.
Not even pre-Code!
Thats' what they wanted!
But what did they get!
You'll find out!
Who knew that 80 years ago they had already mastered click-bait?
"Three on a match" is a saying from the trenches during WWI. A sniper could kill one of three soldiers sharing one match to light their cigarettes. The time it takes to light the three cigarettes was too long for safety.
"The Black Cat" can be enjoyed if you forget about understanding what's going on and listen to the music and drink.
FIFY
God I crave cigarettes.
This story format was reused for "The Best of Everything" (1959) and "Valley of the Dolls." "Best" is very good, with Suzy Parker, Hope Lange, and Diane Baker playing the girls and Joan Crawford the elder mentor. Usually, the outcomes are win / lose / draw. But for Dolls it was lose / lose / lose.
""Three on a match" is a saying from the trenches during WWI. A sniper could kill one of three soldiers sharing one match to light their cigarettes. The time it takes to light the three cigarettes was too long for safety."
There's a shot of a newspaper article explaining that and then declaring it a myth and asserting that it was originated by a man who sold matches and made millions by convincing people that to light a third cigarette on the same match would doom one of the smokers.
"My first view was Trouble in Paradise(1932)..."
"Trouble in Paradise" is great.
It also stars Kay Francis. She's the star of another pre-Code movie I saw the other day: "Jewel Robbery." She delivers the wild line: "You can’t invite me to do anything. Whatever you do must be done by force."
Shane Gillis relates to the Middle East
What happened to my post about the male Shirley Temple?
The Crack Emcee said...
Kay said...
"I am now more accustomed to the way they talk"
The Day White People Stopped Being Cool: "Meh."
11/6/23, 10:05 AM
LOL!
I agree 'Three on a Match' is great. May have to rewatch it.
'Baby Face' is good and a bit part for John Wayne.
'Night Nurse' is another Barbara Stanwyck pre-code with Joan Blondell, and it has a bit part by Clark Gable.
Post-code but still a great Stanwyck and Henry Fonda movie is 'The Mad Miss Manton'. Comedy/mystery.
'Remember the Night' Stanwyck and Fred McMurray is good as well, though more a romance.
If found I understood the movies of the '20s better after learning about 'Charity Girls', urban working class shop girls who really created dating as they were entertained by men on nights out on the town they couldn't afford on their salary.
For this hat girl and other young working women, respectability was not defined by the strict measurement of chastity employed by many middle-class observers and reformers. Instead, they adopted a more instrumental and flexible approach to sexual behavior. Premarital sex could be labeled respectable in particular social contexts. Thus, charity girls distinguished their sexual activity from prostitution, a less acceptable practice, because they did not receive money from men. Other women, who might view charity girls as promiscuous, were untroubled by premarital intimacy with a steady boyfriend.
--Charity Girls and City Pleasures. Author(s): Kathy Peiss
Guilty pleasure (not pre-code, but oldes) I'm a sucker for the Thin Man series. Couldn't do them today. Drinking people are no longer allowed to be funny.
And Crack, I see that beating the dead horse wasn't enough. You had to drag it into THIS thread and whack it some more.
Obsession is, apparently, more than a cologne.
How funny that you're blogging about this film today, Professor. I've been on a William Warren tear lately, trying to track down as many of his films as possible. I just reserved this at the library, along with a couple of others. Fun Fact: William Warren and Joan Blondell also starred together in "Gold Diggers of 1933".
Kay Francis was William Powell's favorite co-star in those early films, until Myrna Loy came along. Unfortunately, Francis had a slight lisp and a droopy eye which affected the number of roles she ended up with. And unlike Norma Shearer, Francis didn't have a successful producer fiancé to go to bat for her. (Irving Thalberg)
@Kay, aside from the ones suggested here (all good ones!) here are a few more:
"The Dark Horse"; "Satan Met a Lady" (early version of "The Maltese Falcon" with Bette Davis); "The Divorcee", with the aforementioned Norma Shearer; and "One Way Passage", with Kay Francis and William Powell.
Archive.org has many of them and can be streamed for free.
There's so much to enjoy and appreciate in these classic movies. I only wish they could ALL be properly restored, especially to fix the sound. I'd love to see the Marx Brothers' first* movie The Cocoanuts (also a Kay Francis picture) get the full Peter Jackson treatment. For a lot of people who don't like old movies, it's the technical issues, especially the sound, that's creating the problem.
*I'm not counting the lost silent pic of course.
JAORE said...
"And Crack, I see that beating the dead horse wasn't enough. You had to drag it into THIS thread and whack it some more.
Obsession is, apparently, more than a cologne."
There goes those crazy imaginations again. That wasn't intentional: I accidentally posted that here, and then wrote another post apologizing, but, for some reason, the apology didn't show. I'd say about a fourth of my posts today have not shown up (see above: "What happened to my post about the male Shirley Temple?") but I had to wait until Ann and Meade released all of my posts, before I knew the apology didn't show or could do anything about any of it. SO,...
Thanks for blaming me, thanks for assuming the worst about me, and thanks for taking a potshot at me - without having all the information - just like y'all have done the Palestinians for decades.
By the way - now that you've mentioned it - I have to leave it up, so everyone knows what we're talking about. Good job.
KellyM said...
How funny that you're blogging about this film today, Professor. I've been on a William Warren tear lately, trying to track down as many of his films as possible. I just reserved this at the library, along with a couple of others. Fun Fact: William Warren and Joan Blondell also starred together in "Gold Diggers of 1933".
Kay Francis was William Powell's favorite co-star in those early films, until Myrna Loy came along. Unfortunately, Francis had a slight lisp and a droopy eye which affected the number of roles she ended up with. And unlike Norma Shearer, Francis didn't have a successful producer fiancé to go to bat for her. (Irving Thalberg)
@Kay, aside from the ones suggested here (all good ones!) here are a few more:
"The Dark Horse"; "Satan Met a Lady" (early version of "The Maltese Falcon" with Bette Davis); "The Divorcee", with the aforementioned Norma Shearer; and "One Way Passage", with Kay Francis and William Powell.
Archive.org has many of them and can be streamed for free.
11/6/23, 3:13 PM
Thank you for these recommendations. The early ‘Maltese Falcon with Bette Davis sounds right up my alley, as do a lot of the films mentioned elsewhere in the comments. Think Baby Face might be next on the list but I will get to them all.
One great thing about Movies from the 30s and 40s, is they MOVE. They usually pack a lot of story into 100 minutes or even 70 or 80 minutes. King Kong 1933 is 100 minutes, King Kong 1976 is 134 minutes.
Too many modern movies just drone on and on, besides having only a small amount of good, intelligent dialogue.
The Black Cat includes the magnificent line: "Supernatural, perhaps. Baloney, perhaps not."
All the comments mentioning Joan Blondell make this a crossover post with the LIleks Bleat, where Ms. Blondell is a common topic (with pics) of the commentariat!
"Best of Everything" was a great movie, opening shows the then-new AT&T building in Manhattan, and all the young women streaming in to work.
As far as pre-code, I like, "Rain," "Minn and Bill," and "Bitter Tea of General Yen." The last depicts Shanghai circa 1930, all the poor farmers camped out, all the foreigners, all the dirt and chaos. My mother was living there at the time and finally got out in 1932.
"Primrose Path" was made in 1940 but has that same harsh vibe.
Just watched Three on a Match. It’s not a thriller and yet so many twists to the plot. Such a short little movie and yet so much happens. Very enjoyable.
You might enjoy the book “Complicated Women” by film critic Mick LaSalle. He covers pre-code women stars between 1929 and 1934 and their impact.
You might want to check out film critic Mick LaSalle’s book “Complicated Women”. Covers the pre-code years of 1929 and the impact certain women stars had on women characters. LaSalle is a huge fan of the female stars of that era.
Too many modern movies just drone on and on, besides having only a small amount of good, intelligent dialogue.
An understatement. I reviewed scripts and screenplays for the military in the late 70s (producers are always looking for free shit and Uncle Sam's keen to oblige if he thinks it'll help recruiting, or something). 'Top Gun', anyone? I doubt the re-do would have passed muster when the original was made.
Visuals, sound and special effects were already beginning to dominate dialogue in the 70s. Scripts of hour-long episodes of popular cop shows were a collection of one-liners, 'zingers' and, maybe, a complete sentence or two.
This period, I think, coincided with the migration of viewers with a modicum of intelligence to PBS and the many Brit productions there that featured actual talking.
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