Film Summary CDXLVII (Party Girl)


Women! Independent! Making huge amounts of money out of the profession that's perceived by the majority of the population to be amoral. Well we just can't have that.
We must shut down this venue of effeminate capitalism. It goes against all things ''we'' stand for.

What's next? Letting the black people in America vote! Having them work side-by-side with the Whites.
Maybe we want to view Italians as ''white people'' give them the same standards as the Anglo-Saxon population. Maybe we shouldn't treat them like crap; thus creating a potentially downtrodden people who turn to organised crime.
Eventually creates a power Dynamic that the United States isn't prepared to deal with. Creating laws and info structures that are more detrimental to the American Vision then any cold war propaganda could hope to be.

Oh dear, it looks like I'm twaddling on again.

So the term party girl in the context of this film mainly refers to a sex worker. Admittedly not all of them are having sex, some are just wandering around as a kind of model for ogling.

The film is split into many major parts. You've got the part with a group of Executives who want to use the dancing party girls to sell their Wares (as they were a fashion company). You have the dancing girls themselves who are bickering and passive aggressive attitudes to one another. You see at the very beginning of the movie that they all make considerably decent money. Several thousand dollars a cheque some times.
There's the district attorney who's trying to shut the entire operation down.

Or at least that's what it looks like in the beginning. As time goes on the entire film devolves into a misleading marriage in where a girl gets this one guy purposely drunk so she can marry him for his finances*. She uses her mother as a manipulative tool and they make this guy's life a living hell. The second half of the movie completely devolves into a drama. Which usually would be a benefit for me as dramas make up some of my favourite dramas in movies. But unfortunately this entire movie is done in a really steal and static manner.
Unfortunately a lot of its characters are played by people who were big and successful in the silent era. They're known for outlandish behaviour and over-the-top body movements. Something to Captivate the audience and to express feeling when words could not apply. But now they just kind of look like a bunch of over-exaggerated fools. Which works out fine when you're in the scene with drunkards but can get a bit irritating when you're just trying to have people communicating. Then you have to people who aren't putting in any extra effort and are just kind of saying their lines. The whole thing's gonna really flat with little interest.

Now some of that's the product of the age, as 1930 was a transitional year and a lot of film was moving in a weird direction. They weren't sure how to do things yet. But there are films 10 to 20 years older than have far more excitement and other films with more dramatic screenplays. This just kind of falls in the middle and tries to rely on its edgy subject matter.

The film just wasn't catching me. I found myself less and less interested with it as time went on. The best part with the party near at the beginning where everybody just kind of dancing around and doing silly things was all right. I would have preferred if the entire movie had just focused on that point.
But it didn't and it just evolved into a pretty basic marriage manipulation drama that even at this point had been long since overdone, both in Cinema and in plays.

Okay to be fair the entire thing isn't just a basic manipulative drama. There is a secondary story where this one girl (who had already loved to the guy who was tricked into marriage) is now depressed at the outcome of said marriage. And there's a bit of extra drama involving the girl in the manipulative marriage throwing her weight around to this guy's father claiming that she's the one who made his business prosperous in the coming days.
She may just plan to take his entire Fortune away from him via the bonds of marriage. Once again this would make an interesting story in its own right. But it's only giving a small amount of time at the end.
The movie has several different stories which would all stand on their own two feet. But unfortunately no time is dedicated to any of them. And when you consider that this movie is only an hour long it's going to prizing just how little can happen in some scenes.

I feel kind of bad about not liking this one. There's a lot of this film I do like. Some of the character acting is fairly good. The interaction between some of the Party Girls is really fun. There's this strange undertone of effeminate yearning for one another. I wouldn't call it a lesbianism, but a kind of ''touchy friendship''.
Perhaps that's just my modern ''Sensibility'' butting in where it has no reason to.
You can't seem to have two people interact with one another with anything more affectionate than a handshake without people proclaiming that they're in some sort of relationship in one way or another.

I love all the costume design in this movie. The girls have these long flowing gowns that look a little bit like night dresses. And they have that wonderful late 20s hair with the overemphasis of eyeshadow. There's just something about that style that I find so great. Of course all the man are dressed in over the top tuxedo suits with walking canes and those silly tall hats.
I also love some of the performances by the secondary Old Men characters. The ones that are just dancing around and having drinks merry old time. Kind of wish we could have focused the entire movie on those people.

Overall I still don't like this movie. But I don't want to condemn it either. It's an hour long and if you want to see something really strange by modern standards or you want to see the equivalent of the movie ''Showgirls'' but done 50 years earlier than maybe this is worth a watch.

Also it's technically a Christmas movie. It has are two main characters get married on Christmas Day. Which gives it about as much connection to Christmas as the film 'Police Academy' but then that's all it takes sometimes.

*It's also pretty heavily implied that she had sex with the guy. And that he's a man of higher stature. So if such information got out, it would be problematic for his societal standing and could also be looked upon as taboo by the standards of the time. Although that's less of a problem than you'd think.

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