Sorry, this movie sucks

Excellent but underrated film

It's a feast for the eyes. But what really makes this dramedy work is the acting.

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

This pre-code drama is probably going to be remembered as Helen Twelvetree's signature role. The film takes her from young innocent bride on her wedding night to an aging party girl in court who has been on trial for killing a man who disrespected her daughter. The film is told in "chapters"; The first chapter has Millie as the nervous virgin, and a candle is inserted three times to indicate the passing time. As three years go by, she finds out that she has been a total fool about her philandering husband, and eight years later, is heavily involved in the party scene. More years go by, and now her 17 year old daughter is about to be exploited just as she was. No mother wants their child to go through the same mistakes she went through, and typical in this kind of film, she happens to be carrying a gun.Shady men and brassy women surround Millie wherever she goes. Her two pals are Lilyan Tashman and Joan Blondell, experts in these types of parts, and her innocent daughter is the young Anita Louise. But everybody pales in comparison to Twelvetrees' total emersement in the role, eating the scenery up like a banquet as she goes from one part of her life to another. By the time she's reached her courtroom finale, she's almost become like Helen Hayes' "Madelon Claudet", a ragged shell of what she once used to be.Watching the first act of this film reminded me of a 1920's play, "Machinal", based upon a real life murder case where the woman went to the gas chamber in the final scene. While this doesn't go down that path, you do get the sense that had Millie remained with her faithless husband, he would have been the one who got the bullet, and Millie would end up in prison singing the "Cell Block Tango" of how "He Had It Comin'".

Millie is a well-made, well-acted early talking picture, but like many of these "pre-code" melodramas, it is not going to seem very entertaining to most classic movie fans because it is so unremittingly grim and sleazy. It works overtime to portray life in early 20th century urban America as a nightmarish merry-go-round of boozing, empty partying and infidelity. Not a single strong, moral major character lightens the dark immorality and hedonism. All the men are cheaters, womanizers, child molesters, and drunkards. The women all victimized weaklings, whores, dumb broads, cats, and lushes. Nevertheless, the tone is ultimately cautionary rather than exploitive.The title character Millie (Helen Twelvetrees) starts as a timid, chaste small town girl who marries a well-off New Yorker (James Hall). A few years later, she is living in luxury, has a beautiful daughter, and a kind-hearted mother-in-law who adores her. But she is unhappy because hubby no long pays much attention to her. He is always going away "on business" -- oh! oh! Presently, while in a nightclub visiting with old home town pal Joan Blondell and Joan's equally slutty cohort Lilyan Tashmn, poor Millie catches hubby with his "business" -- a dame. She divorces the cad but inexplicably lets him have custody of the kid without even demanding a settlement. Any other woman would have socked it to the bum, but our Milly is a hopelessly weak, wavering, unstable type. Her modest job at a hotel tobacco counter gives her contact with lots of men, but only one who interests her, a reporter played by Robert Ames. She thinks he is a nice guy in spite of his guzzling too liberally of prohibition bathtub gin. After all, he is a reporter, and in old movies press men are expected to be drunks. Alas, he turns out to be two-timer as well, the cad! Helped along by the unwholesome influence of professional floozies Blondell and Tashman, Millie descends into wild partying, empty affairs, alcoholism, and a date with a murder trial.Even though this picture is loaded with drinking, promiscuity, infidelity, bawdy language and behavior, it may not be such a bad one for young people to view with proper supervision. The drinking and other dissipation is not glamorized as in other movies of the era, notably the first two Thin Man movies. Millie in fact shows exactly where such a decadent lifestyle leads -- how disgusting intoxication is, and the harm sleeping around and cheating does to oneself and others.Though much immorality and freewheeling lifestyle is shown in Millie, there is in fact no hint of a lesbian relationship between the floozies played by Blondell and Tashman as some others have alleged -- except in the diseased imaginations of the homophobes and homophiles who find such under every rock. The two girls are shown in the same bed together all right, but simply because they are renting a cheap room furnished with only one bed. It was common in those days for both male and female room mates on an economy budget to do so -- with no hanky-panky.Again Millie is a well-made movie with an engrossing story, but it is simply peopled with too many unredeemed losers to be enjoyable to those with a wholesome outlook. The only strong, moral character is Millie's mother-in-law (Charlotte Walker), but she is given only three brief appearances. If her character had been beefed up with a little more screen time, it would have helped.A final note. Several of the players in Millie met sad ends. Helen Twelvetrees' career ended early, mainly because the directors and studio bosses got fed up with her tantrums and her otherwise unstable personality. Forgotten for many years, she died of a drug overdose, an apparent suicide, at age 49. Lilyan Tashman died of cancer three years after Millie was released. As Millie's booze-soaked reporter boy friend, Robert Ames was apparently playing himself. A year later he died at 42 of -- get this --delirium tremens! Don't drink, kiddies.

Poor Millie! She marries for love - not money - and still ends up unlucky in love. There's something intriguingly contemporary about her consistently entering into bad relationships. Also contemporary is her decision to live with her boyfriend instead of marrying him - even though he does offer to marry her.Helen Twelvetrees has the ability to make the heroine's story somewhat compelling despite the film's plodding structure. John Halliday is very appealing as Twelvetrees' suitor until his character turns surprisingly into a cad.So what's the moral of this "woman's picture?" Millie is so hurt by her broken marriage that perhaps she errs in writing off her unfaithful husband so quickly. In him she may have found the only decent male character in the story.

Pretty racy when it was released but rather tame by today's standards. Uneven production with some very good moments but more that will catch your mind wandering. If you are interested in pre-code movies, this one should be seen. Story involves a mother who gives up child and falls from grace only to be redeemed at the end. It is also a movie about a strong woman who exercised choice and refuses to live the kind of life that destined for most young women who were married at the time. Not a great film and probably only worth your time if looking for historical examples or as a classroom project.