This is my first experience with Mae West, and for the earlier part of the movie, I was definitely struggling with her as a movie star. I realized that I was perhaps not grasping the full contextual power of her presence, with her being a female comedy star who happened to be an openly sexual, unashamedly promiscuous being that we were supposed to be rooting for. But what was coming across was a certain smugness in her demeanour and relaxed delivery of her supposedly racy dialogue. (Again, I realize I was being unfair, as things that were racy then do not carry the same charge today, at least without the supporting context.) Perhaps the movie was doing her a disservice. I recently watched
The Bank Dick with W.C. Fields, and you can see how that movie’s flimsy construction complements its star’s comic sensibilities. Fields emanates a sense of two-way contempt, which powers the film. He’d just as soon shoo away those around him as they would shoo him away as well, so it makes sense that the movie would shoo away such inconveniences as narrative progression or character growth and just jump from gag to gag. (I should note that the film is flimsy by the standards of its period, but compared to modern films it’s a model of narrative precision.)
In the earlier sections of
I’m No Angel, West finds herself in the confines of the kind of sturdy studio craft that was in ready supply in the ‘30s, so that her jokes flop limply on the ground as they’re deflected by co-stars carrying themselves with too much dignity. A low point of the film has her demonstrating an extremely low energy circus act involving a bunch of tigers, and the conventional filmmaking can’t mask her total lack of enthusiasm for the proceedings. I understand West started on the stage, and I could picture her style working better in a vaudeville or even a laugh-track sitcom context. (I think sitcoms made with laugh tracks or shot with a studio audience have fallen out of favour, but I do think they provide a fundamentally different sense of timing than the more “cinematic” style of sitcom that’s taken over this millennium.
Seinfeld and
Curb Your Enthusiasm have a lot of common comedic DNA, but the feel of their jokes is quite different.) There’s a brief scene where she’s surrounded by her black maids and cracking jokes, and while you can pick apart the racial and power dynamics of this scene (the movie is not free from the stereotypes of its time, but I think its portrayal of its black characters is still fairly sympathetic), this scene provides a call-and-response interplay that lets her zingers breathe in a way most of the earlier scenes did not.
But by the second half, things start to pick up, and the movie ultimately becomes a case for West’s presence and style of comedy. (It’s probably no surprise that West was credited as the sole screenwriter and that this apparently was the film of hers that received the least trouble from the censors.) The biggest improvement as the movie progresses is the introduction of Cary Grant, who is a match for West in a way her other co-stars were not. When I watched
Hot Saturday and
This is the Night recently, I was struck by how modern Grant seemed in these old movies and how his presence brought a certain edge that almost disrupted the movies’ fabric. (Yes, much of my recent viewing has been dominated by films set to leave the Criterion Channel at the end of May. I assume I’m not the only one who sweats profusely during the latter half of each month, scrambling to watch as many films as possible before they evaporate from the service. One might assume this would have inspired me to buy less physical media given all the great movies I’ve been consuming as a result, but one would be wrong as I happen to like nice things and am bad with money.) You can look at Hitchcock’s use of him in
Suspicion, which is marred by a famously compromised ending yet understands how his charm is inextricably linked to a sense of menace and exploits that quality to great results. Here, he’s the only character other than West who brings a certain level of sexual potency, and as a result is the only one who she can engagingly play off of verbally.
And the movie wisely ends on a court scene, where West litigates not just her specific grievance but also interrogates the culture of misogyny she brushes up against for the duration of the movie. It’s a thrilling scene not just because of the sexual politics at play, but also because it brings her into a substantially more complementary environment. As she questions the witnesses, she knocks off any number of zingers, and you can see how the reaction of the court evokes the laughter one might have heard (or produced) were they to see her on stage. It’s a great scene, and while I appreciate that it depends on a certain level of buildup, I wish more of the movie had captured the same dynamic.