Madam Satan

screwball comedy in the first hour a disaster romance flick the next. With some decent musical numbers tossed in. Some alluring performances especially from Lillian Roth and Reginald Denny. Kay Johnson holds her own. There's some social critique about the extravagant nature of the 20's but maybe it's not purposeful? "Who wants to go to hell with Madame Satan"

A romantic comedy that starts in a normal fashion. Then they have a big dance scene, and the film goes off the rails. It the only zeppelin disaster I've ever seen.

Feminists will disapprove but old films w/ storylines essentially no longer allowed to be made are inherently interesting. A comedy about a wife fighting for an entitled philandering jerk fits the bill. Surprisingly, some of the jokes still work. It's also about the Madonna/whore complex many men have to deal w/ &, like a French film, doesn't assume a man's horrible for feeling this way. It ends w/ a crashing spectacle & efx that must've been dazzling at the time & helped build Demille's rep

Starts out like a fine enough, quasi-screwball farce in the first hour, but then DeMille really lets loose with the spectacle when the action moves to a zeppelin (!) and it ascends to campy bliss. No wonder Guy Maddin likes it. The direction is a bit too plodding to really reach the phantasmagoric heights of say, Berkley at his best during the musical sequences, but it's surprisingly free of schmaltz and even rather astutely cynical in it's pre-code sexual politics a la Lubitsch. Good stuff.