Classic Films in Focus: MADAM SATAN (1930)

Cecil B. DeMille's 1930 musical extravaganza is hard to classify in terms of genre and even harder to describe in terms of sheer spectacular weirdness, but Madam Satan is one of those Pre-Code pictures you really need to see for yourself in order to appreciate the extent to which it revels in a "more is more" approach to cinema. Slow and creaky at times, especially in the early stages, it switches into high gear for a third act that more than makes up for its flaws, with a wild costume party aboard a floating Zeppelin and a full throttle descent into passion, chaos, and disaster. It's not the pinnacle of DeMille's oeuvre, but it certainly showcases the director's taste for excess, and Kay Johnson is a delight once she abandons her role as martyred wife to become the titular - and titillating - Madam Satan.

Johnson plays the much put upon Angela Brooks, a loyal and respectable wife to the wealthy but utterly unreliable Bob (Reginald Denny). Angela turns a blind eye to most of Bob's failings, but when she discovers his infidelity with the gold-digging Trixie (Lillian Roth) she decides first to leave him and then to fight to get him back. Angela uses a lavish costume party thrown by their friend Jimmy (Roland Young) as an opportunity to disguise herself as the worldly and seductive Madam Satan in order to lure Bob back into her arms. Fate, however, has a shock in store, as a violent storm pitches the Zeppelin and its occupants into peril.

We should probably agree up front not to take marital advice from 1930s Hollywood, which tends to advise injured wives to ignore spousal cheating and blame themselves for male infidelity. Madam Satan is squarely in this camp, with Angela accused of causing Bob to stray by acting like an adult in a serious relationship. To a modern viewer it's clearly Bob who ought to change his irresponsible party boy behavior, and I admit to being a little disappointed that Angela doesn't shoot him or push him out of the collapsing Zeppelin (who would have known? It would have been the perfect murder!). It's a mystery to me why she wants him back at all, but that's the goal that drives the rest of the picture, with the literally angelic wife, Angela - get it? - having to become a sexy devil in order to coax her wayward husband back into the marital fold.

As tiresome as that sexist ideology is, Angela does become a lot more entertaining when she stops crying over her idiot spouse and shows up at the Zeppelin shindig ready to gyrate her way into his heart, if his heart is actually involved in this scenario at all. The picture is loaded with innuendo and double entendre to remind us which of Bob's organs Angela is really supposed to capture. The costume party, which is basically an orgy of excess, is a perfect setting for this effort, with scantily clad women, leering men, an auction of sexy ladies, and a bizarre musical number about electricity that might be the result if Tesla had directed porn. Johnson really revels in the Madam Satan persona, and she and Lillian Roth engage in such spirited combat that the male actors just fade into the background. It's a shame, really, when Angela reveals her identity to Bob and goes back to being the love starved wife desperate for attention from a man who doesn't deserve her, but the ending suggests that a bit of the devil in Angela has come to stay.

For a comparison of Madam Satan with DeMille's other work in the early 1930s, see The Sign of the Cross (1932), or go straight to The Ten Commandments (1956) for his final towering achievement. You'll find Kay Johnson in Thirteen Women (1932), Of Human Bondage (1934), and Son of Fury (1942), while Reginald Denny, whose film career began in 1915, also appears in Of Human Bondage as well as Romeo and Juliet (1936), Rebecca (1940), and a number of the Bulldog Drummond films as Algy Longworth. Look for Lillian Roth in Animal Crackers (1930) and Ladies They Talk About (1933), but be sure to take note of I'll Cry Tomorrow, the 1955 biopic starring Susan Hayward that chronicles Roth's struggles with alcoholism. Roland Young is probably best remembered for the title role in the Topper films, but he's also very funny as Uncle Willie in The Philadelphia Story (1940).

Classic Films in Focus: AND THEN THERE WERE NONE (1945)

Long a staple of high school and community drama programs, Agatha Christie's stage version of And Then There Were None is a little less murderous than the original novel but still packed with good parts. The 1945 film adaptation, directed by Rene Clair, stocks those parts with truly memorable character actors, including Walter Huston, Judith Anderson, Barry Fitzgerald, Mischa Auer, and Richard Haydn, each in fine form as one of the condemned guests of the mysterious Mr. Owen. Invested with a mischievous sense of humor as well as a constantly growing heap of corpses, And Then There Were None moves quickly and handles its large cast well, giving each at least one good scene before the murderer removes that player from the game. The result is great fun, even if the viewer already knows the identity of the killer before the opening credits roll.

Eight guests and two house servants gather to spend the weekend on a remote island estate at the command of the secretive Mr. U.N. Owen, whom none of them seem to know. A recording soon informs them that their host is privy to their terrible secrets; each is accused of causing the death of another person and getting away with it. The guests are then rapidly dispatched, each in a way that corresponds to the nursery song, "Ten Little Indians," and every death is accompanied by the destruction of another Indian statue on the dining room table. Realizing that one of them must be the killer, the shrinking group of survivors tries to identity the murderer, but alliances within the group both help and hinder the process.

It's difficult to say very much about the mystery itself without giving away the ending, although most viewers who come to the movie will already know it from previous encounters with the frequently performed play. The conclusion does differ significantly from that of Christie's 1939 novel (the title also differs, and for good reason), although most of the characters carry over in somewhat altered forms. Christie's premise has been copied, parodied, and reworked countless times, but it's still a very good setup for a mystery, and the criminal conduct of most of the guests makes us fairly nonchalant about their deaths. The absence of a proper detective - Roland Young's dense Mr. Bloor definitely doesn't count - leaves the nervous survivors to figure things out for themselves, while the audience makes it own guesses as each new death removes another suspect from the list. No two deaths are exactly the same, although, this being Agatha Christie, there is a decided preference for poison overall, which helps to keep the women and older male characters in play as potential killers.

For movie buffs, the real pleasure of this particular production is the large and impressive cast, including Walter Huston as the alcoholic Dr. Armstrong and Barry Fitzgerald as Judge Quincannon. Both of those actors are celebrated for their strong character performances, and here they simply revel in their delightfully suspicious roles, especially when they join forces in the third act. Judith Anderson, best remembered as Mrs. Danvers in Rebecca (1940), plays the sanctimonious Miss Brent with heartless hauteur, while C. Aubrey Smith is rather tragic as the elderly general. Richard Haydn and Mischa Auer both play their characters for laughs, with Haydn as the long-suffering butler, Rogers, and Auer as the "professional house guest" prince. Sadly, Auer's character is the first to go, but he makes the most of his brief time on screen. Louis Hayward and June Duprez play the attractive young couple who fall for each other even as the murderer closes in, and they have fine chemistry together, especially when each suspects that the other might be the killer. Rounding out the crowd are Roland Young as the ineffectual Mr. Bloor and Queenie Leonard as the housekeeper, Mrs. Rogers, whose early death the other characters lament mainly because it deprives them of their cook.


If the black comedy of And Then There Were None appeals, follow up with Murder by Death (1976) or Clue (1985), both of which take their cues from Christie's plot. For more film adaptations of Agatha Christie, try Witness for the Prosecution (1957), Murder on the Orient Express (1974), and The Mirror Crack'd (1980). Rene Clair also directed The Ghost Goes West (1935), The Flame of New Orleans (1941), and I Married a Witch (1942). See Barry Fitzgerald in Going My Way (1944), where his performance earned nominations for both Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor (he won the latter). Walter Huston won an Oscar for The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948), but don't miss his wild performance in Kongo (1932). Look for both C. Aubrey Smith and June Duprez in The Four Feathers (1939), and catch Louis Hayward in The Man in the Iron Mask (1939). Oddly enough, both Richard Haydn and Queenie Leonard, who play a married couple in this film, provided voices for the 1951 Disney classic, Alice in Wonderland.