A 10 for the politics and the for sex the politics disproves of. A key aspect of the movie that most reviewers miss is the essential plot turn requiring the appearance of a federal "morals agent." If that isn't fascism, ca 1934, then I don't know what is. Once he's there, everyone falls in line with the new order.
And a new order it was. 1934 was the year the Democratic Party, in a pay-off to its key Roman-Catholic voting bloc (always and still a party of factions), finally enforced the Hayes Code. What makes this movie fascinating is that the movie itself self-consciously enforces the Hayes Code by showing what the Hayes Code prohibits - lots of bouncing breasts, including visible nipples, as other reviewers note - but those are really cover for lots of gorgeous young men, either naked (in an early scene) or (in a later scene) in tank tops and really tight (and of course bulging) short shorts marching militantly, enough to give the Hitler in all fascists a good hard-on.
Most reviewers say the movie is worth watching as a swan-song to the pre-code era. I disagree. This movie is a must-see to understand the scandal that was and remains the Democratic Party. Sure, the Republicans have their scandals, but isn't every high school student of American History taught all of them? The American cultural elite presents the Democratic Party, the party of slavery, then Jim Crow, then American Fascism (via FDR), then corrupt hypocrisy,(via JFK), then bureaucratic incompetence (via Carter and Obama) as the saintly party? The party that will solve all our problems if only given complete control of all levers of power? This was the message in 1934, and it remains the message in 2015. We ignore it at our peril, as members of this year's crop of Democratic presidential candidates (Sanders and Clinton) include as part of their platform the evisceration of the first amendment? So watch this movie, one of the first that presents Democrats as the party of moral superiority, an attitude that the current White House trumpets almost every day.
But if this movie was just crude 1930s Democratic Party American Fascism propaganda, whose primary focus was the suppression of the liberation of the female libido so evident in pre-code movies, it still would not be worth watching. As noted above, however, this movie is both that and a wonderful celebration of pre-code liberation, as somewhat sadly captured by the wonderful Gertrude Michael. She knows the times are changing, and while her performance has real vigor at the beginning of the movie, by the end of the movie she is weary with defeat. Regardless, Michaels is superb throughout, and at only 23, hard to believe that she is already over-the-hill, but she is, and at the finale it is clear she has been supplanted by the dyed-blonde Ida Lupino, who is excellent as well, but also scary as she embraces the American version of Hitler-youth, by welcoming the vice squad capitan.
And what cojones Robert Armstrong has. A full 21 years older than Michaels, he plays her for the true-blue girl-friend he knows he can keep. However, he also knows, as an ex-con, that he's holding a pretty lousy hand in the movie's plot, but he plays it for all its worth. How subtle his performance is compared to the crude Anglo-machismo of Buster Crabbe (What a physique! What a bad actor!). I wish his team, celebrating the Republican virtues of liberty, and its necessary corollary of libertarianism when it comes to matters of sex, could have won the conflict, but that was not to be in 1934, not in Germany or Italy, and certainly not in the US.
And no review of the movie can be complete without lauding James Gleason, who of course does a fine comic turn as the shady money-guy. The movie ends with Gleason mooning us, and it is a fitting good-bye to the sexual liberation that did not die, but would be suppressed for another 30 years. For who wants to look at Gleason's butt for long? The American Fascists deliberately end the movie this way, to remind the viewer that they will be better off now that the feds are actively policing morals....
And for those cultural liberals, as I am certainly one, who always vote the Democratic ticket for moral reasons, don't think the 1930s vice-squad enforcement of behavior and speech codes had no tragic or devastating consequences in the US, just as the same enforcement today will do the same, then think again. Think of Billy Haines being driven from Hollywood, and all the great actresses, most notably Ruth Chatterton and Helen Twelvetrees, who could no longer find parts suitable for their femme libre personalities. And if this happened in the fake world of cinema, you can imagine what was going on in real life. It couldn't have been pretty, and there had to be a lot of suffering. Perhaps if the American people had risen up and fought for its cinematic and personal freedoms in 1934, then it would have more readily resisted the rise of Nazi Germany. But the course of American cinema shows the exact opposite happening, with 1937's "Love, Honor, and Behave" an outright celebration of National Socialism, right down to Priscilla Lane practicing her German as she belts out "Bei Mir Bist Du (sic) Schane (Schon)." Yuk, and in 2015 we are paying the price for not understanding this shameful history of ours, and the key role the Democratic Party plays in it. So watch this movie so that we don't once again have to repeat history.
And a new order it was. 1934 was the year the Democratic Party, in a pay-off to its key Roman-Catholic voting bloc (always and still a party of factions), finally enforced the Hayes Code. What makes this movie fascinating is that the movie itself self-consciously enforces the Hayes Code by showing what the Hayes Code prohibits - lots of bouncing breasts, including visible nipples, as other reviewers note - but those are really cover for lots of gorgeous young men, either naked (in an early scene) or (in a later scene) in tank tops and really tight (and of course bulging) short shorts marching militantly, enough to give the Hitler in all fascists a good hard-on.
Most reviewers say the movie is worth watching as a swan-song to the pre-code era. I disagree. This movie is a must-see to understand the scandal that was and remains the Democratic Party. Sure, the Republicans have their scandals, but isn't every high school student of American History taught all of them? The American cultural elite presents the Democratic Party, the party of slavery, then Jim Crow, then American Fascism (via FDR), then corrupt hypocrisy,(via JFK), then bureaucratic incompetence (via Carter and Obama) as the saintly party? The party that will solve all our problems if only given complete control of all levers of power? This was the message in 1934, and it remains the message in 2015. We ignore it at our peril, as members of this year's crop of Democratic presidential candidates (Sanders and Clinton) include as part of their platform the evisceration of the first amendment? So watch this movie, one of the first that presents Democrats as the party of moral superiority, an attitude that the current White House trumpets almost every day.
But if this movie was just crude 1930s Democratic Party American Fascism propaganda, whose primary focus was the suppression of the liberation of the female libido so evident in pre-code movies, it still would not be worth watching. As noted above, however, this movie is both that and a wonderful celebration of pre-code liberation, as somewhat sadly captured by the wonderful Gertrude Michael. She knows the times are changing, and while her performance has real vigor at the beginning of the movie, by the end of the movie she is weary with defeat. Regardless, Michaels is superb throughout, and at only 23, hard to believe that she is already over-the-hill, but she is, and at the finale it is clear she has been supplanted by the dyed-blonde Ida Lupino, who is excellent as well, but also scary as she embraces the American version of Hitler-youth, by welcoming the vice squad capitan.
And what cojones Robert Armstrong has. A full 21 years older than Michaels, he plays her for the true-blue girl-friend he knows he can keep. However, he also knows, as an ex-con, that he's holding a pretty lousy hand in the movie's plot, but he plays it for all its worth. How subtle his performance is compared to the crude Anglo-machismo of Buster Crabbe (What a physique! What a bad actor!). I wish his team, celebrating the Republican virtues of liberty, and its necessary corollary of libertarianism when it comes to matters of sex, could have won the conflict, but that was not to be in 1934, not in Germany or Italy, and certainly not in the US.
And no review of the movie can be complete without lauding James Gleason, who of course does a fine comic turn as the shady money-guy. The movie ends with Gleason mooning us, and it is a fitting good-bye to the sexual liberation that did not die, but would be suppressed for another 30 years. For who wants to look at Gleason's butt for long? The American Fascists deliberately end the movie this way, to remind the viewer that they will be better off now that the feds are actively policing morals....
And for those cultural liberals, as I am certainly one, who always vote the Democratic ticket for moral reasons, don't think the 1930s vice-squad enforcement of behavior and speech codes had no tragic or devastating consequences in the US, just as the same enforcement today will do the same, then think again. Think of Billy Haines being driven from Hollywood, and all the great actresses, most notably Ruth Chatterton and Helen Twelvetrees, who could no longer find parts suitable for their femme libre personalities. And if this happened in the fake world of cinema, you can imagine what was going on in real life. It couldn't have been pretty, and there had to be a lot of suffering. Perhaps if the American people had risen up and fought for its cinematic and personal freedoms in 1934, then it would have more readily resisted the rise of Nazi Germany. But the course of American cinema shows the exact opposite happening, with 1937's "Love, Honor, and Behave" an outright celebration of National Socialism, right down to Priscilla Lane practicing her German as she belts out "Bei Mir Bist Du (sic) Schane (Schon)." Yuk, and in 2015 we are paying the price for not understanding this shameful history of ours, and the key role the Democratic Party plays in it. So watch this movie so that we don't once again have to repeat history.