The credits list from top to bottom is filled with some of the most brilliant talent in Hollywood circa 1937, yet this screwball comedy stumbles on the way to greatness and misses it by inches. It’s not an embarrassment. It survives the generations worth seeing as a taste of 1930s breeze. Its problems are not the creative team. Writer Ben Hecht is sharp and in his comfort zone, which is the world of harried journalists. Then there’s director William Wellman who keeps the pace snappy and composes witty, unconventional shots in which he sometimes hides the faces of the actors or has them comically struggle to be seen in a frame dominated by some clumsy prop. Its problems aren’t its leading lady, Carole Lombard, madcap as ever, or the sterling supporting cast. There’s also nothing wrong with the film’s social commentary, a still-stinging take on tabloid celebrity as told in the tale of a country girl (Lombard) desperate for a more worldly life who becomes the talk of the big city for having terminal “radium poisoning”, though she learns early in the story that it’s a misdiagnosis from her doctor; nevertheless, she perpetuates the lie because she enjoys the fame.
No, the problem here is so simple that I’m almost embarrassed to say it.
The problem, I think, is the Technicolor.
Now, primitive 1930s Technicolor photography is otherworldly and beautiful. A part of me wishes that movies still looked like that. It’s dreamy and transporting—and it’s a debilitating distraction here in what should have been a real barn-burner. It stands as a rare film of the time that was made in entirely in Technicolor (a format that was mostly used for one-off musical scenes in otherwise black-and-white films) and I don’t know exactly how its use here may have put extra pressure on the production, but something here is very off.
Also, while Fredric March was a giant in dramatic roles at the time, he sputters, gasps and stalls in this comedic turn. He’s the reporter who follows and eventually falls in love with Carole Lombard and the part begs for a more feather-light presence than March is made to provide.
I grew up reading movie history books that extolled this as a masterpiece, but I have to agree more with the film’s title. Nothing’s sacred.