LAUGHTER (74)

Directed by: Harry d'Abbadie d'Arrast (1930)

Starring: Nancy Carroll, Fredric March, Frank Morgan

The Pitch: A showgirl marries a millionaire, living a life that has everything - except laughter.

Theo Sez: Only a rather rushed final reel mars this little-known gem, a revelation if only for its two stars : Carroll (what became of her? who is she?) is a bewitching mix of half-glimpsed steel beneath china-doll girlishness, and March's nimble charm will amaze those familiar only with his later, stodgier performances (playing a similar character in NOTHING SACRED, a mere seven years later, he already seems too set, too avuncular). It's a film about the tail-end of the Jazz Age (and of course, though no-one could've known it in 1930, the beginning of the Depression) : though it's a comedy there's a hangover-after-the-party vibe about it, which is why it might've worked even better with a downbeat ending - our heroine, a Follies girl married into respectability, has everything except the "laughter" of her carefree years, and the film is at its most poignant when it harks back to that freedom. Carroll launching into an impromptu Charleston in her husband's stuffy mansion, or joining March on a last spree (including an extended spoof of married life, calling themselves "Mr. and Mrs. Smith"), is imbued with a wry affection for lost youth - both our heroine's and the world's, which is what makes this such a very modern movie. Its unspoken nostalgia for a time of lightness and optimism, when everyone was Terribly Gay and everything was banter and playfulness, even serious discussion treated as a joke ("You ever hear the story about the cake?" "No, what?" "Well, it seems you can't have your cake and eat it too"), meshes well with our own tendency to look back fondly to a time before everyone got so earnest, before things got Complicated. That it's so unexpectedly fluent in terms of technique - seldom flat or theatrical - is merely a bonus.