Some short notes and then to the smoking issues upon which I can't help but focus.
The "Thin Man" comparisons are obviously valid. This couple seems too cute as compared to Nick and Nora, who tip toe along a line these two cross regularly. At times they're more like smitten 13-year-olds than the urban adults they proclaim to be.
Another cultural oddity seen in this film, and many others from this era, Is the strange platonically open marriage concept. In the films of the 1930s spouses in modern urban marriages seem cool with their special one going on dates with other potential suitors. A husband might find another fellow to keep company with his wife while he's away. I can't imagine one of my married friends today suggesting I take his wife out so she won't get bored while he's on his sales trip to Poughkeepsie.
SMOKING RITUAL
We have some interesting smoking from the guys in this one. Don't remember seeing any of the females lighting up (good girls?).
Sloan gives Morgan a cigarette and then lights it for him in a tender but masculine moment in what appears to be a well furnished lobby of a movie theater. Then he holds the match while the dialogue progresses. When he wants his own smoke, he just flings the now cold match down to the floor between his feet. They continue talking as he lights up his own and all I can think of is "Aren't you going to pick up that match?"
The great Louis Calhern has the best smoking moment when he enters a room, lit ciggy in mouth. He transfers the cig from mouth to left hand and then from left to right hand so smoothy you hardly notice. He has this graceful grip on the cigarette between the middle digits of his first two fingers where his fingers are staggered like a spiral staircase. Then he gets indignant and punches Dwight Fry with a short left upper cut and eventually pores from a pitcher with that right hand, all this with that cigarette still i gently smoldering in his right hand. This man was a dedicated smoker, right up to his fatal heart attack at 61.
The "Thin Man" comparisons are obviously valid. This couple seems too cute as compared to Nick and Nora, who tip toe along a line these two cross regularly. At times they're more like smitten 13-year-olds than the urban adults they proclaim to be.
Another cultural oddity seen in this film, and many others from this era, Is the strange platonically open marriage concept. In the films of the 1930s spouses in modern urban marriages seem cool with their special one going on dates with other potential suitors. A husband might find another fellow to keep company with his wife while he's away. I can't imagine one of my married friends today suggesting I take his wife out so she won't get bored while he's on his sales trip to Poughkeepsie.
SMOKING RITUAL
We have some interesting smoking from the guys in this one. Don't remember seeing any of the females lighting up (good girls?).
Sloan gives Morgan a cigarette and then lights it for him in a tender but masculine moment in what appears to be a well furnished lobby of a movie theater. Then he holds the match while the dialogue progresses. When he wants his own smoke, he just flings the now cold match down to the floor between his feet. They continue talking as he lights up his own and all I can think of is "Aren't you going to pick up that match?"
The great Louis Calhern has the best smoking moment when he enters a room, lit ciggy in mouth. He transfers the cig from mouth to left hand and then from left to right hand so smoothy you hardly notice. He has this graceful grip on the cigarette between the middle digits of his first two fingers where his fingers are staggered like a spiral staircase. Then he gets indignant and punches Dwight Fry with a short left upper cut and eventually pores from a pitcher with that right hand, all this with that cigarette still i gently smoldering in his right hand. This man was a dedicated smoker, right up to his fatal heart attack at 61.