Rating: 5/5
Cult Movie Challenge 2018 | 21/52 | Pre-Code
A garbage collector grabs a can and brings it to the river to dump it into his trash gondola. Only in Venice, am I right? A shadowy figure jumps over a banister, through the trees, fleeing a hotel room where François Filiba lay out cold. The doorbell buzzes continuously as two Italian sex workers stand outside the door. François comes to and pulls himself up. His apartment is in disarray. He calls to report a robbery, and the news spreads quickly through the building.
The camera flies across the way and into another apartment. On the porch, a baron smokes, and a waiter comes to take his order as a countess rides up on a gondola. The waiter notices a leaf stuck to the baron’s coat and pulls it off. The countess arrives in a fuss over the princes, counts, dukes, and kings she’s avoided and greeted. She receives a call in the baron’s room, supposedly from a Duchess. But on the other end, we see a woman telling her to come home through the back door.
François speaks to the police inspector about how he came to let a man in who proceeded to rob him—something about doctors and tonsils. Word makes it up to the baron and the duchess. When the waiter leaves, the duchess accuses the baron of being the thief. He accepts, unflinching, while also accusing the duchess of being a thief, for he had François’s wallet until the duchess pilfered it from him. The two realize they love one another and confess their true identities: the baron is master thief Gaston Monescu, and the duchess is a pickpocket named Lily.
The film jumps years and locations to Paris to introduce us to the perfume manufacturer Colet and Co. Why? Because Gaston and Lily have a plot to steal from it.
The film is whip-smart and wastes little time. It’s full of little oddball jokes and bits of social satire. I love the dude who quotes Trotsky at Colet for buying an expensive handbag. As a pre-code film, the movie presents scenes that imply Gaston and Lily are having sex and includes other suggestive innuendos. It’s nice to see actual chemistry in a 100-year-old movie.
The film briefly touches on the woes of the Great Depression through factory worker salaries, but relishes in highlighting the working class, who often fill the edges, a theme usually overlooked in screwball comedies. No one is an angel — Gaston and Lily get to luxuriate in each other’s lawless habits.
You have to be in the social register to keep out of jail. But when a man starts at the bottom and works his way up, a self-made crook, then you say, "Call the police. Put him behind bars. Lock him up."
The sets are immaculate Art Deco. The gowns are numerous and elegant—one gown looks so sparkling that it almost appears blue in this monochrome film. The performances are good, Miriam Hopkins is hysterical, but Kay Francis steals every scene she’s in.
Watch it, ya dork!