The Silver Screen Oasis

JackFavell wrote:I like One Hour With You very much, perhaps better than the original Lubitsch silent version, The Marriage Circle. Where The Marriage Circle is harsh and quite cynical, One Hour With You is more playful. The darker implications of the script are softened in OHWY, the tone of the film is a bit lighter and it's more successful in the comedy. The Marriage Circle almost struck me as a tragedy, masquerading as comedy when I first saw it. I think too, Chevalier is far more appealing than Monte Blue, who just seems hapless.

JackFavell wrote:That's funny. I've wanted to see THREE CORNERED MOON for a long time too. I'll have to look into that dvd. Thanks for the info on Maid of Salem - I like The Crucible, better to read than to watch it, it's a bit of an ordeal, and the hero's mistakes and wavering always make me want to scream! That being said it does move me and I think Miller was saying something important.

I watched the quite engaging Depression Screwballish comedy "Three Cornered Moon" (1933), so far the best film included in the Claudette Cobert DVD Collection. Meet the Rimplegar family from Brooklyn: the absent minded matriarch of the Rimplegar family delightfully and zanily played by the very funny Mary Boland who steals the show from everyone else; Claudette, the only daughter, in love with a no-good, pretentious, lazy artist played by Hardie Albright and hopelessly courted by the only mentally balanced character in the picture: Doctor Stevens, well played by Richard Arlen; elder brother Wallace Ford, who's studying to pass the Bar Examination to become a full-fledged lawyer, but who's been distracted from his task by a lovely air-head, played by beautiful Joan Marsh; now, there's an actor in the family, the affected William Bakewell, essaying Monsieur Beaucaire's title role, but getting in the end less than a one-line speech in a stage-play; and lastly, clean-cut, brave Tom Brown, the youngest sibling. There's also funny Lyda Roberti, as their Polish maid, who doesn't understand English.

In all a very fine effort by Elliott Nugent and the cast; not as leisurely played as later zany masterpieces like "My Man Godfrey" or "Bringing Up Baby", but anyhow a good movie that paved the way for those.