Because this film was part of the UCLA Film and Television Archive's Sin Uncensored: Hollywood Before the Code program, I was disappointed that it was a little talky and bland in spots rather than filled with the risqué humor I expected. However, the intersection of various elements of the plot made the film engrossing as it continued toward its conclusion. Almost as if the screenwriter intended the film for an audience in 2005, in Two Kinds of Women, the main character's (Miriam Hopkins) father is a Senator from South Dakota who believes that New York City is corrupting the rest of the nation. His daughter has not had the pleasure of living in New York, but she is culturally ambitious enough to read The New Yorker and to know how to spend an evening in New York way past her 'bedtime,' once she gets to the city. She develops a relationship with playboy Phillips Holmes who, predictably, is reformed just by knowing her. Although I found Hopkins as charming as ever, she needed more to do, more mischief to conduct with double entendres in this earlier part of the film, so this is the duller part of the plot. But the film escalates in drama and symbolism when the cast has a party in the art deco set of a penthouse. It's the Prohibition era, and the partygoers learn dances that we would probably laugh at today and the alcohol flows effusively. This 'outlandish' activity takes place against the backdrop of the troubled Senator on the radio reaching heights of hysteria about New York and the history of the Nordic race until he has a breakdown and must stop his address. His dramatization of the country's cultural problems using over-the-top language is a funny part of the film, but actually the events at the party symbolize the tawdry world he condemns: one man is so used to his wife being perpetually drunk that she is set up in a rather comatose state behind a screen with a drink in her hand so that she can drink without anyone having to look at her; two other partygoers demonstrate the reprobate lifestyle the Senator is railing against, one who allows death to occur based on his greed from gambling debts and the other who becomes the victim, we should probably believe because of her similar greed for a divorce settlement. Eventually, Hopkins' love (Holmes) needs to be saved from prosecution for the murder, and this is a moral test for the Senator. Will he stand by his daughter who believes in Holmes and jeopardize his image as the puritanical official who will stand no immoral behavior, like that which has tainted his daughter? Perhaps this plot sounds a little paint-by-the-numbers. But the party scene has such significant consequences for people who were so oblivious to their own actions, even while the Senator desperately tried to warn them, that this climactic scene is rather dark and dramatic. Although the ending turns out well for our leads, the viewer sees that the Senator may also luck out even after choosing to stand by his daughter. Because he takes her side, this makes him look good to his rural voters back home. Thus, politics still trumps all. How moral are we human beings anyway? This film seems more the serious drama with a little early 1930's sinful humor rather than a pure pre-Code Lubitsch-touch comedy, which I expected with Hopkins. Although it might seem a bit stiff at times, it is still entertaining to see how this society deals with the culmination of events that occur in the reprobate world they created.
Review of Two Kinds of Women
