SHE MIGHT AS WELL HAVE USED A SHOTGUN!

Double Harness
1933 / 1:09
Tagline: “SHE MIGHT AS WELL HAVE USED A SHOTGUN!”
[internet archive]

Sister Joan is dependable while Sister Valerie is frivolous.  Lazy John is a profligate who plays polo instead of keeping the family shipping business above water. Practical Joan sets her cap on John. She realizes that he's a project but she holds the theory that a woman should make her mark on the world by supporting and assisting her man make his mark.

Her noble aim is based on her axiom that marriage is a woman's business and love is superfluous if she can do a man good personally and professionally. Despite her skepticism about romantic love, Joan realizes she is falling in love with John.  In an amazing scene that reveals his cruelty and her love, good girl Joan spends the night with John, a departure from everybody’s expectation of what she would ever do, including her own. John’s total uninterest in getting married, she thinks, justifies her tricking him into marriage. She connives to have her father bust them in a compromising situation and thus compel John to do the honorable thing. On their honeymoon they discuss a divorce after six months.

Joan, in love with John, is wracked by guilt over her dishonesty. She feels she has to work to win John’s love. The household cooking gets better. Joan provides business opportunities through her father’s network. John discovers job satisfaction is a real thing, not an oxymoron. Joan listens closely when John talks about dealing with stodgy coots at work.

Spoiled and willful Valerie doesn’t stop spending on extravagances. This inability to deal with the Depression lands her in trouble deep, even to the point of prostituting herself to pay debts. This sad desperate situation leads to the climax, the most awkward dinner party in the history of San Francisco. The black humor of it was diluted by a slapstick scene that was out of place, the only grossly false note in the movie.

Talented but forgotten actress Ann Harding plays Joan with an attractive mix of strength and vulnerability. She looks stricken so persuasively that the movie-goer wants to put their arms around her. I gather that The Look of Desolation was Harding’s trademark, like Margaret O’Brien’s ability to cry on command, but knowing that The Look of Desolation is a honed skill doesn’t make it less impressive or dilute a movie-goer's desire to comfort her. Plus, Ann Harding has a femininity that seems to glow, with pale skin, dark eyes, and blonde hair a man could lose himself in. Forever. Her look of turbulent emotions bravely restrained balances her sometimes quaintly affected manner (a holdover from the silent era?).

William Powell as John is smooth and has a cutting edge that movie-goers expect to see in swingers. His character grows in the course of the movie. His scenes in the second half as an honest-to-god adult male instead of a smooth-talking philanderer are persuasive indeed. Lucile Browne as Valerie is totally convincing as the flighty impulsive younger sister. Lilian Bond as Monica, John’s ex-lover, is as disagreeable as she is alluring. Reginald Owen as Freeman, John’s butler, is equal parts discretion and familiarity.

Is this a melodrama? No, all the performances are restrained and believable. A comedy? No, there are no sustained comedic scenes or situations. For me, the main interest was Harding's blend of old-fashioned nurturance and sensitivity with more modern determination and resilience.