Other Men's Women (1931)

 William Wellman, Joan Blondell, James Cagney

Mary Astor is sad.

I always thought that Wellman's over-the-top melodrama was a symptom of mediocrity.  Maybe it's not.  Even films like Night Nurse which I think even Wellman would admit are absurd still manage to be gripping.  I spent the entirety of this one on the edge of my seat, which is odd, because it's nothing special, I guess.  It's not an especially good plot, at least not in the conventional way, not in the way in which Hitchcock would craft it.  It's exciting because the characters are interesting, and when we put the characters together, we know that interesting things will happen, although we're not quite sure what.  It reminds me of of Stolen Kisses a little bit, a movie with very good talent, but one where Truffaut was too busy with the Langlois Affair to make his rushes (he thinks the picture was better for this, and he was probably right).  'Character development' is too broad and shallow a term for what I'm trying to get at here, but too many of the films which have beeen popular in the recent past -- Armageddon, The Usual Suspects, Boondock Saints, The Dark Knight, all seems hopelessly 'autistic' -- again, for want of a better term.

I got spoiled on Mary Astor seeing her in Meet Me in St Louis.  I thought she couldn't act!  I was annoyed that she was fat, which is a pretty shallow reaction, but then I thought her role was kind of insulting too.  But she's pretty solid here, in fact, I liked her a lot.

This must have been one of Joan Blondell's first movies, and she quickly became a major star.  And then, inexplicably disappeared.  Maybe, like so many of my favorite actors, she was only attractive to audiences when she was very young and youthful and vibrant.  I don't know.

I'm not really sure what happens exactly, but it goes something like this.  There are this two guys.  They work for a railroad.  One guy is always hitting on waitresses and offering people sticks of gum.  He says, "have a chew on me".  The other guy, his best friend, is married to Mary Astor.  Somehow, they all end up living in the same house, and Mary Astor and the gum-chewer end up falling for each other.  Much male posturing and a few fist fights ensue and the main character gets very drunk with Joan Blondell.  Then James Cagney shows up, but he doesn't dance.  Then a bridge collapses, but I won't tell you how.  Then they all live happily ever after.

Other Men's Women is weird and slow, and it took me like two or three tries to learn how to watch this one, but it was well worth it.  The past was a very different place.  They had a lot more railway lines for one thing.  Railway car seems a much more efficient way to get around.  Back in the fifties, the automobile companies purposely removed a lot of this very useful and energy-efficient infrastructure so that kids like me would be broke from having to fork over a large chunk of our incomes for gas.  Now that was smart.