Rimplegars Rule!
Oh my! In this movie I've just seen, a family matriarch lost her entire fortune in the stock market while another family member speculated on the possibility of selling the family homestead -- and the impossibility of doing so in the current economic climate. If that is not bad enough, one family member collapsed due to hunger and overwork while another faced the choice of either meeting her boss after work for a “date” or losing a badly needed job. In other words, it was a movie just full of situations that most modern people can identify with all too well -- and yet it is set in the 1930s.
I'm referring to the 1933 film Three-Cornered Moon -- one of the first screwball comedies* and very easily one of the least known. The most famous member of the cast is Claudette Colbert who went on to become far more famous in films like It Happened One Night and Since You Went Away. Lyda Roberti of College Rhythm fame played Jenny, the linguistically-challenged Polish maid who does not speak much English -- and inevitably mangles what little she does know. The rest of the cast is not so well known as these two but they were entertaining as well in a story that illustrates what a lot of upper-middle-class families had to go through when they lost their money in the Great Depression.
It would have been very easy for the filmmakers to make this flick another “unlikable rich people get their just desserts” type of movie but to their credit, the rich family -- who go by the name of Rimplegar -- are actually quite sympathetic. Not only are their struggles likely to seem all too familiar to people like myself who have done their share of job hunting, but their plight moved me in a way that the plights of many characters in more recent movies did not.
The one scene that most struck home with me was the scene in which Colbert's character (Elizabeth Rimplegar) literally begged her boyfriend Ronald -- an aspiring novelist -- to help out the family by condescending to take an office job. However, the boyfriend -- despite having lived with the Rimplegars rent-free for quite a while and eating his share of groceries -- chose not to pursue the job offer -- not because of cowardice or ill health -- but because of his “artistic integrity,” apparently preferring to let his beloved's family work their fingers to the bone rather than help out with anything that does not involve his novel.
Needless to say, the Rimplegars were not too happy with Ronald's Rousseau complex and Elizabeth was especially unhappy. And although I have known enough people who had struggled to appease both Mammon and the Muses -- including myself -- I could not bring myself to sympathize with him either. Perhaps because most of the struggling artists I have met were unable to make the same choice in good conscience that Ronald made.
In any event, should not a true artist have felt some responsibility to help support the people who were supporting him -- or should he -- like Ronald -- have chosen to play grasshopper to the more plebeian worker ants? And what point is there in artistic integrity if it does not translate into sympathy for the people around you? In an age when it is becoming more and more common to see celebrity misbehavior excused on the grounds that so-and-so is a great artist and therefore not obliged to abide by the same rules as ordinary folk, I find this an intriguing question.
Anyway, even if you disagree with the movie's philosophy, I suspect that you would find this to be an entertaining movie.
* Yes, you read that right. It is a comedy.
Oh my! In this movie I've just seen, a family matriarch lost her entire fortune in the stock market while another family member speculated on the possibility of selling the family homestead -- and the impossibility of doing so in the current economic climate. If that is not bad enough, one family member collapsed due to hunger and overwork while another faced the choice of either meeting her boss after work for a “date” or losing a badly needed job. In other words, it was a movie just full of situations that most modern people can identify with all too well -- and yet it is set in the 1930s.
I'm referring to the 1933 film Three-Cornered Moon -- one of the first screwball comedies* and very easily one of the least known. The most famous member of the cast is Claudette Colbert who went on to become far more famous in films like It Happened One Night and Since You Went Away. Lyda Roberti of College Rhythm fame played Jenny, the linguistically-challenged Polish maid who does not speak much English -- and inevitably mangles what little she does know. The rest of the cast is not so well known as these two but they were entertaining as well in a story that illustrates what a lot of upper-middle-class families had to go through when they lost their money in the Great Depression.
It would have been very easy for the filmmakers to make this flick another “unlikable rich people get their just desserts” type of movie but to their credit, the rich family -- who go by the name of Rimplegar -- are actually quite sympathetic. Not only are their struggles likely to seem all too familiar to people like myself who have done their share of job hunting, but their plight moved me in a way that the plights of many characters in more recent movies did not.
The one scene that most struck home with me was the scene in which Colbert's character (Elizabeth Rimplegar) literally begged her boyfriend Ronald -- an aspiring novelist -- to help out the family by condescending to take an office job. However, the boyfriend -- despite having lived with the Rimplegars rent-free for quite a while and eating his share of groceries -- chose not to pursue the job offer -- not because of cowardice or ill health -- but because of his “artistic integrity,” apparently preferring to let his beloved's family work their fingers to the bone rather than help out with anything that does not involve his novel.
Needless to say, the Rimplegars were not too happy with Ronald's Rousseau complex and Elizabeth was especially unhappy. And although I have known enough people who had struggled to appease both Mammon and the Muses -- including myself -- I could not bring myself to sympathize with him either. Perhaps because most of the struggling artists I have met were unable to make the same choice in good conscience that Ronald made.
In any event, should not a true artist have felt some responsibility to help support the people who were supporting him -- or should he -- like Ronald -- have chosen to play grasshopper to the more plebeian worker ants? And what point is there in artistic integrity if it does not translate into sympathy for the people around you? In an age when it is becoming more and more common to see celebrity misbehavior excused on the grounds that so-and-so is a great artist and therefore not obliged to abide by the same rules as ordinary folk, I find this an intriguing question.
Anyway, even if you disagree with the movie's philosophy, I suspect that you would find this to be an entertaining movie.
* Yes, you read that right. It is a comedy.
Labels: Arte, Claudette Colbert, La Gran Depresión, Lyda Roberti, Películas Clásicas II, Pobreza, Polacas y Polacos
posted by Tonio Kruger at 9:55 AM
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