No Woman Ever had Such a Lover

Note: The Gail Patrick film festival continues. Some of her previous movies have been reviewed: If I Had a Million, Murders in the Zoo, and The Phantom Broadcast. In this movie she plays an American rich girl. She sets her cap on Death. She plays the part as frank, direct, and open, not a haughty rich at all, as she was destined to be typed after she played mean sister Cornelia in My Man Godfrey a couple of years later. To readers wondering why a forgotten actress is appearing in what could be taken for a Perry Mason blog, she was the executive producer of the greatest courtroom drama of teevee's first century - you guessed it in one - Perry Mason.

Death Takes a Holiday
1934 / 1:19
Tagline: “No one can die - while he makes love!”
[internet archive]

A rich English family and their American friends are enjoying a festival while the intended of the family’s son prays in church. Her piety and seeking of the illimitable contrast with the frivolity, heedlessness, and worldliness of the family she will marry into. Speeding back to their villa they escape being killed only because Death decides to take a three-day vakay at their Italian villa.

Death feels curious as to why mortals have such terror and revulsion regarding his reality. Death desires to know the reasons few people can think straight about death, taking their individual extinction personally indeed. Shunned, Death feels lonely. At first, only the host knows Death’s true identity. Death impersonates charming Count Sirki.

Frederic March plays the title role. His Death is stern and preemptory but also stiff and pompous as if unused to having a body of flesh and blood and wearing clothes. March does not overdo Death being taken with sensual pleasures like wine; after a sip, he says wonderingly but not too, “Already I have learned a fact of importance.” His lines are delivered deadpan, heavy with meanings given his identity. Meeting an experienced diplomat, he says, “Given your age, it’s a surprise we have not met before.”

Much of the humor is nonverbal. Death looks ever so slightly bemused as if just struck by the fact when he says, “I have something in common with doctors” and “They were such heavy drinkers that they weren’t afraid even of me.” He looks earnest and reassuring when he says of war, “Your sacred privilege of blowing each other to bits is quite safe.”

Gail Patrick glares at her rival for the Count’s attentions. She plays an engaging American rich girl, disarmingly direct. Death naively insults her, saying the wrong thing in the wrong way. Seeing he’s blown it somehow, he observes, “The Baron will be disappointed,” because the Baron taught him the main game in life was love.

One gets the feeling the budget for this movie was not all that generous. Although shot on only a couple of sets, the production avoids feeling stagey. Considering the script is based on a play, it is a little talky but not oppressively so. There’s much movement and the story goes straight and true.

I suppose with regard to theme, movie-goers could see this movie as an example of Pre-Code risk-taking. Examining issues concerning death in a buoyant fashion is not exactly an enterprise people-pleasing Hollywood is famous for. Messages are delivered, I think, indirectly, to avoid singeing movie-goers who think a frank treatment of death is tantamount to taking their granny’s death lightly. While the lessons here don’t depart from what wise people have been saying about Death for centuries, they are not on the level of greeting cards either. Only connect. Love one another. Relish the time you have, here and now.