Bad Girl – 1931 / 1932
OK, this movie was like a mild form of torture. At first I was upset because I didn’t particularly like the two main characters. Then, when I began to see the good people underneath the hard and cynical exteriors, their inability to communicate with each other drove me insane and I found myself ready to scream at them! And even now, as I write this review, I am still having difficulty deciding if this is poor writing or incredibly effective writing. The story drew me in and before I knew what had happened I was really hoping to see the couple resolve their problems.
The film starts out with Sally Eilers playing the part of Dorothy Haley, a cynical woman who thinks that all men are players that are just trying to get fresh with a girl. She goes to Coney Island with her best friend Edna, played by Minna Gombell. While there she meets Eddie Collins, played by James Dunn, a man who thinks that all women are dizzy dames that want to control a man’s life
Dorothy is immediately impressed that Eddie seems to have no interest in flirting with any girl. My problem with this whole set-up is that he is so disinterested that I don’t understand why she would want anything to do with him. But no, she is attracted to him and they spend the rest of the evening talking. They somehow hit it off, despite the fact that they are on the verge of arguing half the time.
But then, through a quick series of events, the two socially inept people agree to marry the day after their second date. WHAT?!? But not to worry. As it turns out, they are very happily wed and Eddie goes out of his way to give her everything she could want. In fact, he gives up his dreams of owning his own business and spends every last dollar of his life savings to give her a nice big home with beautiful new furniture because he thinks it is what she wants.
The problem is that he never discusses anything with her because he is so socially stunted and bashful about how much he loves her. He surprises her with the new home. If he only would have talked with her, he would have learned that she was pregnant and willing to live in a smaller home so that he could use his money to start his business. So much hardship and angst could have been avoided in their story if only they knew how to talk to each other.
As an outside observer to their tale, I was about to start hitting my head against the wall every time they made their situation worse through their lack of communication. But then I finally figured it out. That was the point of the story. These two people are so socially insecure that the drama was about their inability to talk to each other. She was unable to express her true feelings for him out of fear that he would leave her. He was so embarrassed by his own feelings that he couldn’t even tell her he loved her.
But in the end, right when they are about to split up because each thought that the other didn’t want the baby, they discovered that the opposite was true. They were desperately in love with each other and they were both crazy about the baby. Finally, we are left believing that they are going to go on leading emotionally fulfilled and happy lives. But like many films that were made in the early 30s, the plot’s conflicts are all resolved within the last 90 seconds of the film. So while I got the relief that I was wanting, I had almost no time to enjoy it before the film ended.
Incidentally, the title of the film, Bad Girl, makes little sense to me. I don’t see how Dorothy was a bad person, just a bad communicator. And she was no worse than Eddie. In fact, the worst bad girl in the film was Dorothy’s friend Edna, and even she wasn’t so bad. She just liked to verbally spar with Eddie because he couldn’t stand her, thinking she was one of those controlling dames.
I though Dunn was the best part of the film. Becoming a husband brought out the best in his character. He was so desperate to make his wife happy that he not only sacrificed his dreams, but did it with a genuine smile. He loved her so much, he actually went into a professional boxing ring and got beat-up, just to earn forty dollars to get her what she wanted. In moments like that he was adorable. If only he was able to tell her how much he loved her. It would have been nice if the film had ended with Eddie finally saying the words “I love you.” We all knew he did, but I would have liked to hear him say it.