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The Depression's Deco waiting room, all marble floors and glass chambers. (The window is there to showcase the New York skyline, and for people to jump out.) William Wyler has a single outdoors shot to take in the Empire State Building, then dives right into the claustrophobic bustle of the city's most dramatic law office. Elmer Rice's menagerie accommodates diligent secretaries (Bebe Daniels), chatty switchboard operators (Isabel Jewell), blonde molls (Thelma Todd) and black widows (Mayo Methot), plus lovelorn coworkers and errand boys, Irish bulldogs and Yiddish scrappers. John Barrymore is the star attorney everybody waits for, zipping from case to case until his scandal-weary wife (Doris Kenyon) brings him to a standstill: "I don't see why you can't practice law like a gentleman." Family affairs and an impending disbarment provide the main crises, identity and betrayal are ongoing matters for the Jewish protagonist. "Those guys who came over on the Mayflower don't like to see the boys from Second Avenue sitting in the high places." A vibrant record of Thirties theatrical tropes, a concerto of speeches, wisecracks, ethnic accents, clattering typewriters and Girl-Friday sighs, held together by a swift technique akin to Capra's. Hard rectangles and a mobile camera, with at least one composition (the bandaged head of Vincent Sherman's Communist agitator in foreground profile while the lawyer gets his shoes shined) just waiting for deep focus. A rich part richly embodied, Barrymore in full flight as the slick fixer who finally crumbles inside his own three-piece suit in a darkened lobby. "There's nothing in the retainer that requires me to make love to you." Dodsworth and Detective Story benefit from this mighty dry run. Cinematography by Norbert Brodine. With Melvyn Douglas, Onslow Stevens, Clara Langsner, John Hammond Dailey, Robert Gordon, John Qualen, T.H. Manning, and Richard Quine. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |