Have you ever danced with the Devil in the pale moonlight? Director Cecil B DeMille takes the homogeneous romantic comedy trope and transforms it into a roman orgy before plunging the final act into a “titanic” disaster flick, as even the band plays while the airship goes down! Constrained by the limitations of early sound design, the music and vocals are somewhat muddled with shrill high notes and the acting rather stagey as the characters move into the frame to deliver their dialogue in two shot. The great DP Harold Rosson (Jean Harlow’s second husband!) photographs the first act in a rather static and typical fashion, but his compositions come alive in the subsequent acts when the Zeppelin and its orgiastic revelers are revealed!
The film begins as a simple story of a cheating husband. DeMille depicts this theorem in the very first shot of a chirping bird in a gilded cage! Hubby Bob and his buddy Jimmy poorly attempt to hide the affair after a drunken night in court (for driving 65mph). Bob’s angelic wife Angela doesn’t confront him about the girl, she instead plays dumb so Bob & Jimmy must play narrative gymnastics to appease her sublime curiosity. Seems Bob needs fire in his sex life and Angela is ice cold. This first act seems to empower Angela as the one harmed as she remains above deception and plays along with the confounding stories her paramour and his cohort have concocted. They all end up in the other girl’s apartment, Trixie, a jazz singer who’s hot to trot. So, Jimmy pretends to be married to Trixie (but Trixie doesn’t know it!) when Angela shows up because she found the card with her address in Bob’s clothing. The pantomime becomes more pathetic when Bob shows up thinking Jimmy is making time with his gal. Trixie, that is. It’s a typical romantic farce that becomes bizarre when Jimmy MCs the masquerade ball!
Now, here it gets insanely inventive and interesting. The ball is held upon a huge, moored Zeppelin and the entrance is a musical dance routine straight out of a hallucinogenic vision of electric bolts and churning gears, shot by Rosson from directly above, then superimposed upon whirring machinery. We get scantily clad women and men frothing and roiling in carnal delight and that’s before the auction for the six most beautiful girls! We also get drinks delivered in mini-zeppelin peddle-cars! Writhing cat-girls prance and claw their way about. Of course, Trixie in her mini-pheasant costume hooks up with Bob and his mini tunic until the mysterious Madame Satan appears and sings her sinful song! Ms. Satan lures Bob away from his mistress but doesn’t reveal her identity. A dance-off like a gunfight at high-noon, only here it’s nigh-midnight between the devil and the busty pheasant. Shenanigans ensue until the revelation when lightning strikes the blimp, and it breaks loose and spirals out of control. Everyone grabs a parachute. WTF?
Though the story empowers Angela as the wronged party and gives her control, the final act ends in her begging for forgiveness (and rescue) when her own deception is unmasked. So, Bob, who cheated on her with Trixie and then Madame Satan, is now the victim whose anger is justified. I don’t like it. The story could have cut down on some of the bedroom escapades and given us some background on their relationship so we’re mostly in the dark about their life before marriage. Bob isn’t totally unlikable he’s just typical of the contemporary patriarchal morality and Angela has no recourse but marriage on his terms or divorce...also on his terms. Her heart may be broken but the boob Bob only has his arm in a sling. Maybe some other appendage needs splinted instead.
Final Grade: (B-)