Friday, December 09, 2011

Learning From Old Movies - The Animal Kingdom

I am coming up on my 1,000 post. I tend to think that I haven't don't anything a thousand times. Nonsense, we all have. We just don't think of them. Anyway, I needed an old movie fix. You rarely can go wrong with a Leslie Howard movie.

YouTube Link for The Animal Kingdom

Actually it was Ann Harding. I had seen another movie in which she scopes out a playboy with potential and decides to plot to marry him. It was a lesson on entrepreneurship in the depression. Ann's business was marriage, making her husband look good and keeping him happy. William Powell's business was to avoid marriage and responsibility.

Anyway, in The Animal Kingdom Ann and Leslie were doing the do outside of the bands of matrimony. They were the best of friends, were lovers and no strings. She goes off oversees and Leslie meets Myrna, who does love him but wants to recreate him into a proper rich dude. Which he does not want to be.

Moving on. This was a pre-code film. People talked about sex. Well, you do have to decipher quite a bit about sex in the film. Myrna used a sleeping gown to great advantage. She definitely roped the dope but you can only do that a few time before the dope gets to thinking that the rope is a harness and he doesn't want to be in one.

In other words, juicy gets em crazy but you can't keep it up. Most of the time.

The movie has a happy ending for two of the three leads. From the DVD cover you can get a clue.

When people talk about the simplicity and morality of an early time I'm not sure what time that would be. These weren't bad people. Leslie wanted his friend and his wife. His wife wanted him. His friend wanted to be left alone because she didn't want to be a homewrecker.

Life if complicated. Always has been. Always will be.

No comments:

Post a Comment