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Millie1931 US Dir John Francis Dillon Cast Helen Twelvetrees, Joan Blondell, John Halliday, Lilyan Tashman, James Hall IMDb |
It’s unfortunate that launching this pre-Code project and gaining some increased readership lately have coincided with a change in my living situation (good for me; bad for my movies) that prevents me from writing as often as I had planned. That said, I appreciate the recent feedback tremendously and hope to find a balance that will serve this blog well, even if it takes three months to do my pre-Code plan justice.
Anyway, it’s a sad thing about Millie, that it should be so mundane and poorly developed as a film when it contains all the hallmarks of a great pre-Code offering. Following the title character through twenty years of her life, it covers too many incidents too briefly and too simplistically to make much out of its meaty fodder. Excited to get a start in New York city, Millie marries impulsively and faces her wedding night with dread, trying frantically (and perhaps unintentionally comically) to put off her bridegroom who inquires politely if she is tired yet. She goes on to lose her husband to another woman, give up her child in the divorce settlement, and barely string herself along as a working girl while getting burned by one cad after another. Through it all she has two gal pals by her side, transparently lovers, their relationship as explicitly displayed as showing them side-by-side in bed wearing negligees. Once in a while, too, there is a real zinger in the writing (one of the friends proclaims, “Someday I hope to marry a nice conservative gentleman, just to travel”). But overall, it’s a by-the-book soaper which fails to cash in on any of its provocative ideas.
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