*** Big spoilers in this comment. You may wish to see the film first. ***
Oh, this story has no moral/ This story has no end/ This story just goes to prove to you/ That there ain't no good in men/ She loved her man/ But he done her wrong/ Oh so wrong.
--The Ballad of Frankie and Johnny
Now that April 22, 2008 will provide a fresh DVD to remind people of the glories of this early, idiosyncratic classic, let's gather 'round the barroom table, hoist a schooner of foaming brew, and discuss it a bit. I definitely agree with the commentators on this site who couldn't call this a comedy. I'd call it a cracking good melodrama with humor and songs and blood and betrayal and white slavery and bold women holding their own in a hard world.
Yet, it's an academic truth that in the discussion of dramatic forms anything that has a restorative ending can legitimately get tagged as a comedy. People with Ph.D.'s attest this. "Does a comedy have to be funny?" gets soberly mulled over in playwright classes at Julliard.
So, let's ask if this movie does have that restorative ending. Or do we see here a "problem comedy" as in late Shakespeare ("Measure For Measure", to cite an example). Does the production slip something at us under the radar?
As we know, "Diamond Lil", Mae West's bawdy stage success set in the Gay 90's, underwent a sanitizing sea change into "She Done Him Wrong" for Paramount. The Hollywood Production Code specifically banned her play from being filmed, along with works by other authors (notably "Lulabelle" and "The Shanghai Gesture"). The tidied up shooting script got through the Hays Office and still managed to deliver some jolting frankness about human affairs, earning a best picture nomination despite its more cartoonish aspects.
Mae West's character Lady Lou blatantly tells her maid that she plays a man's game by men's rules. And she does know her men. She's under the protection of the fellow running the saloon she works at. She has Chick, a frantic former hot squeeze, doing time upstate (only she hasn't told him he's now former). A local ward heeler has his eyes set on her and announces his intention to co-opt her in short order from the saloonkeeper who's keeping her.
Then there's that Salvation Army-style rescue mission dude next door. Oh, and Russian Rita's oily escort wants to spend more time with Lou and gains the leverage to press his attentions. A lot of balls to keep up in the air, as Miss West might have considered writing.
Although Lady Lou definitely controls action, she does this by controlling the men who initiate it. She demonstrates that when she resolves her boy friend dilemma. She uses eyes and facial expressions alone to send the Bowery politico Flynn to his death.
She has seen Chick, now an escaped convict and Flynn's armed enemy, slip into her boudoir. She directs the unknowing ward heeler into harm's way with a mimed variation on her trademark "Come up 'n see me" line, all the while she's singing the betrayal-revenge ballad "Frankie and Johnny".
She uses one man to cancel out another. It doesn't matter who'll emerge alive. She knows she can deal with the survivor.
In a sense, her actions parallel an earlier scene where she dispatches her proved ally, the bouncer Spider, to pick up Russian Rita's corpse. She simply signals him with her eyes, trusting he'll know what to do when he finds a dead woman in her dressing room. He does. She knows her men and how to employ them for her own ends.
The moralistic cartoon interpretation of the story's wrap-up would have the special Federal predator, the Hawk, reform Lady Lou by extracting her from dubious friends and an environment of vice. Of course, a cynic could say that he simply swoops her up as his prey. Notice the way Cary Grant coolly appropriates her, not at all different in his attitude from the confident Flynn when that worthy announces his plan to annex Lady Lou's charms.
The Hawk essentially offers marriage or jail time. Perhaps he's cleanly presenting her with reciprocating love, mutual understanding, and a protector whose Federal status will permanently shield her from the privations of the street she's proud to walk. That's the nice, Hays Office view.
Or maybe the male game hasn't changed and West knows it. Lady Lou's diamonds, like Lorelei Lee's in "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes" (1953) and the satchel of negotiable loot Barbara Stanwyck has amassed in "Baby Face" (1933), signal a woman's independence, the high cards she holds at the table. The Hawk's tiny diamond ring and marriage certificate may simply act as the age-old trumps in a man's game.
By putting those down on the green felt he stakes a permanent claim on exclusive rights to her hourglass shape, one defensible against other men and overriding her own desire for freedom of action. That viewpoint would give us a true problem comedy ending. One perhaps signaled by the possessive smirk the Hawk gives her in the carriage.
Of course, as we're now speculating, we should remember that the Hawk doesn't exactly fly alone hunting Lady Lou. While she's lip-lickingly fascinated with the guy, could she stay limited to any one man, even a Cary Grant-sized dreamboat? We do have a woman whose own will has remained her only law up to this point.
I'd say she still knows her men. However she plays the hand he's now dealt her, we can rely on Miss West's Lou to lay her cards down skillfully. She'll use the Hawk's own game and his own rules for her own purposes, however she conceives them, just as she has when coping with all the other males in her life.
Oh, this story has no moral/ This story has no end/ This story just goes to prove to you/ That there ain't no good in men/ She loved her man/ But he done her wrong/ Oh so wrong.
--The Ballad of Frankie and Johnny
Now that April 22, 2008 will provide a fresh DVD to remind people of the glories of this early, idiosyncratic classic, let's gather 'round the barroom table, hoist a schooner of foaming brew, and discuss it a bit. I definitely agree with the commentators on this site who couldn't call this a comedy. I'd call it a cracking good melodrama with humor and songs and blood and betrayal and white slavery and bold women holding their own in a hard world.
Yet, it's an academic truth that in the discussion of dramatic forms anything that has a restorative ending can legitimately get tagged as a comedy. People with Ph.D.'s attest this. "Does a comedy have to be funny?" gets soberly mulled over in playwright classes at Julliard.
So, let's ask if this movie does have that restorative ending. Or do we see here a "problem comedy" as in late Shakespeare ("Measure For Measure", to cite an example). Does the production slip something at us under the radar?
As we know, "Diamond Lil", Mae West's bawdy stage success set in the Gay 90's, underwent a sanitizing sea change into "She Done Him Wrong" for Paramount. The Hollywood Production Code specifically banned her play from being filmed, along with works by other authors (notably "Lulabelle" and "The Shanghai Gesture"). The tidied up shooting script got through the Hays Office and still managed to deliver some jolting frankness about human affairs, earning a best picture nomination despite its more cartoonish aspects.
Mae West's character Lady Lou blatantly tells her maid that she plays a man's game by men's rules. And she does know her men. She's under the protection of the fellow running the saloon she works at. She has Chick, a frantic former hot squeeze, doing time upstate (only she hasn't told him he's now former). A local ward heeler has his eyes set on her and announces his intention to co-opt her in short order from the saloonkeeper who's keeping her.
Then there's that Salvation Army-style rescue mission dude next door. Oh, and Russian Rita's oily escort wants to spend more time with Lou and gains the leverage to press his attentions. A lot of balls to keep up in the air, as Miss West might have considered writing.
Although Lady Lou definitely controls action, she does this by controlling the men who initiate it. She demonstrates that when she resolves her boy friend dilemma. She uses eyes and facial expressions alone to send the Bowery politico Flynn to his death.
She has seen Chick, now an escaped convict and Flynn's armed enemy, slip into her boudoir. She directs the unknowing ward heeler into harm's way with a mimed variation on her trademark "Come up 'n see me" line, all the while she's singing the betrayal-revenge ballad "Frankie and Johnny".
She uses one man to cancel out another. It doesn't matter who'll emerge alive. She knows she can deal with the survivor.
In a sense, her actions parallel an earlier scene where she dispatches her proved ally, the bouncer Spider, to pick up Russian Rita's corpse. She simply signals him with her eyes, trusting he'll know what to do when he finds a dead woman in her dressing room. He does. She knows her men and how to employ them for her own ends.
The moralistic cartoon interpretation of the story's wrap-up would have the special Federal predator, the Hawk, reform Lady Lou by extracting her from dubious friends and an environment of vice. Of course, a cynic could say that he simply swoops her up as his prey. Notice the way Cary Grant coolly appropriates her, not at all different in his attitude from the confident Flynn when that worthy announces his plan to annex Lady Lou's charms.
The Hawk essentially offers marriage or jail time. Perhaps he's cleanly presenting her with reciprocating love, mutual understanding, and a protector whose Federal status will permanently shield her from the privations of the street she's proud to walk. That's the nice, Hays Office view.
Or maybe the male game hasn't changed and West knows it. Lady Lou's diamonds, like Lorelei Lee's in "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes" (1953) and the satchel of negotiable loot Barbara Stanwyck has amassed in "Baby Face" (1933), signal a woman's independence, the high cards she holds at the table. The Hawk's tiny diamond ring and marriage certificate may simply act as the age-old trumps in a man's game.
By putting those down on the green felt he stakes a permanent claim on exclusive rights to her hourglass shape, one defensible against other men and overriding her own desire for freedom of action. That viewpoint would give us a true problem comedy ending. One perhaps signaled by the possessive smirk the Hawk gives her in the carriage.
Of course, as we're now speculating, we should remember that the Hawk doesn't exactly fly alone hunting Lady Lou. While she's lip-lickingly fascinated with the guy, could she stay limited to any one man, even a Cary Grant-sized dreamboat? We do have a woman whose own will has remained her only law up to this point.
I'd say she still knows her men. However she plays the hand he's now dealt her, we can rely on Miss West's Lou to lay her cards down skillfully. She'll use the Hawk's own game and his own rules for her own purposes, however she conceives them, just as she has when coping with all the other males in her life.