Dinner at Eight (1933)
Brilliant Comedy Turns to Pathos and Goodness
It's easy to love this movie, and easy to dismiss it. If you don't respond to the stiffly filmed (camera on a tripod) movies of this time (and not all of them are like this) you'll struggle with the tableau-on-a-stage effects here. But if you think of it as theater, with its requisite focus on "acting" in all its exaggerations and subtleties (both), you'll see some amazing writing and performances in what is one of George Cukor's best directing efforts. I really think this is a brilliant film, and if it lacks the visual drama, the interesting lighting, or the naturalistic feel you expect, give it another try, and take it on its own terms. You might be really glad.
First of all, I think the best performance of all is Lionel Barrymore's. Sure, coming in a close second is the pathos filled drama made vivid (and tear-jerking) by his brother. The scene with John Barrymore as the washed up actor as he kills himself is one of cinema's great moments, I think, and I sound like I'm exaggerating, but watch how it unfolds, without sound, and without pretense, until he fades away, his profile carefully positioned so that when the door is opened on his corpse, that is what everyone will see. Beyond even that, though, and working with less emphatic material, Lionel, as the businessman struggling with the full weight of the depression, parries all the woes and the friendships as he suffers his brush with mortality. His understatement is perfect. He makes the film more than a sensation.
His wife, played by Billie Burke (of Wizard of Oz fame, as the good witch), is brilliantly frivolous. Watch how she actually makes her absurdity fluid and alive. And most of all, watch how by the end her love for her husband crystallizes, not in some sea change, but in a believable minor shift--canceling the performance, refocusing on the moment. But not giving up dinner, not after all that has preceded.
Some people love Jean Harlow for her role as a ditzy tart, and I have a problem with women portrayed as idiots (even if they have a razor sharp side to them), and so Harlow grates on me a little. She does act with verve, and you can tell she's a lot of fun. Not so her husband played by Wallace Beery. I'll leave his bombast alone. But the third caricature in the movie is the brilliant, brilliant, need I repeat, brilliant Marie Dressler, playing an aging woman who has both her history and her wisdom to delicately trail behind her. Her interactions with the would-be tartlet, the young woman (and daughter) foolishly (and understandably) in love with John Barrymore, are treasures, from start to finish, especially at the end. Don't mistake Dressler's over-sized expressions as hamming it up. There are people almost like that, and it projects on the screen really well.
When all is said and done, the multi-layered plot here wraps together with clever ease, and by the time the movie ends, right at eight o'clock (yes, dinner is served after we are done watching), there is this feeling of complete satisfaction. (It may not be coincidence that one of the screenwriters, Herman J. Mankiewicz, also famously helped with Citizen Kane.) Life has its dramas and traumas and humors and disappointments. But it works out somehow, in a different way than we intended, surely, but because of the good will and smart reactions of the best of us.
Brilliant Comedy Turns to Pathos and Goodness
It's easy to love this movie, and easy to dismiss it. If you don't respond to the stiffly filmed (camera on a tripod) movies of this time (and not all of them are like this) you'll struggle with the tableau-on-a-stage effects here. But if you think of it as theater, with its requisite focus on "acting" in all its exaggerations and subtleties (both), you'll see some amazing writing and performances in what is one of George Cukor's best directing efforts. I really think this is a brilliant film, and if it lacks the visual drama, the interesting lighting, or the naturalistic feel you expect, give it another try, and take it on its own terms. You might be really glad.
First of all, I think the best performance of all is Lionel Barrymore's. Sure, coming in a close second is the pathos filled drama made vivid (and tear-jerking) by his brother. The scene with John Barrymore as the washed up actor as he kills himself is one of cinema's great moments, I think, and I sound like I'm exaggerating, but watch how it unfolds, without sound, and without pretense, until he fades away, his profile carefully positioned so that when the door is opened on his corpse, that is what everyone will see. Beyond even that, though, and working with less emphatic material, Lionel, as the businessman struggling with the full weight of the depression, parries all the woes and the friendships as he suffers his brush with mortality. His understatement is perfect. He makes the film more than a sensation.
His wife, played by Billie Burke (of Wizard of Oz fame, as the good witch), is brilliantly frivolous. Watch how she actually makes her absurdity fluid and alive. And most of all, watch how by the end her love for her husband crystallizes, not in some sea change, but in a believable minor shift--canceling the performance, refocusing on the moment. But not giving up dinner, not after all that has preceded.
Some people love Jean Harlow for her role as a ditzy tart, and I have a problem with women portrayed as idiots (even if they have a razor sharp side to them), and so Harlow grates on me a little. She does act with verve, and you can tell she's a lot of fun. Not so her husband played by Wallace Beery. I'll leave his bombast alone. But the third caricature in the movie is the brilliant, brilliant, need I repeat, brilliant Marie Dressler, playing an aging woman who has both her history and her wisdom to delicately trail behind her. Her interactions with the would-be tartlet, the young woman (and daughter) foolishly (and understandably) in love with John Barrymore, are treasures, from start to finish, especially at the end. Don't mistake Dressler's over-sized expressions as hamming it up. There are people almost like that, and it projects on the screen really well.
When all is said and done, the multi-layered plot here wraps together with clever ease, and by the time the movie ends, right at eight o'clock (yes, dinner is served after we are done watching), there is this feeling of complete satisfaction. (It may not be coincidence that one of the screenwriters, Herman J. Mankiewicz, also famously helped with Citizen Kane.) Life has its dramas and traumas and humors and disappointments. But it works out somehow, in a different way than we intended, surely, but because of the good will and smart reactions of the best of us.