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That was an excellent one.

To all those who have watched it: I hope you enjoyed it as much as I do.

Not sure how, but this is easily one of the best movies all summer. Multiple levels of funny, never takes itself seriously, super colorful, and creative.

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

Borzage is a film-maker whose reputation has ebbed and flowed quite dramatically over time. And perhaps not surprisingly. His work represents, even more clearly than that of Ford or Capra, a combination of all that is the best and all that is the worst about US film.In the late twenties and early thirties, he was looked at as the brightest hope of the US cinema and probably deserves the accolade of being the winner of more undeserved Oscars than anyone else before the advent of Ang Lee. Subsequently his reputation plummeted (as did the quality of his films) but he is now once again riding relatively high in critical esteem, at least in respect of his early films.But even these are a vary mixed bunch. There are Borzage films I greatly admire, there are several which i Find irritating (most of the Gaynor-Farrell films) but this particular 1931 film I absolutely detest.Its reputation for "realism" (in the sense of naturalism, that rare bird in US cinema) is entirely unjustified. Any comparison for instance with King Vidor's excellent The Crowd (1928) reveals immediately how spurious and fake the "realism" is here. One reviewer talks of ordinary people not being treated with "condescension". They are in fact treated here as complete and utter idiots and the entire plot revolves around perfectly stupid misunderstandings that are only possible because of the characters' extraordinary obtuseness. This is in turn set off by a fake naivety which is supposed to be charming but is just cringe-makingly sentimental. I have difficulty in imagining any treatment that could be more condescending...and this makes it, to my mind, not just irritatingly sentimentalised (as in the case of the Gaynor-Farrell films) but virtually a kind of pornography that demeans everybody associated with it.That such a film should be set during an economic depression and, ignoring any of the real problems of the time, should concentrate on such trivialities may in part be due to the fact, as another reviewer points out, to the fact that the original novel was written some eight years earlier but, in the context of 1931, it is absolutely grotesque although typical enough of the US cinema's reaction to the depression.It is in part just the familiar Hollywood problem with "truth". While The Crowd was hated by the studios and unsuccessful with the public (in practice the first tends to condition the second rather than vice versa), this saccharine piece of junk won another Oscar for its director.

This pre-code drama, nominated for a Best Picture Oscar, is a delightfully witty yet potentially tragic melodrama about a pretty young model (Sally Eilers) who turns down all the wrong guys until she finds what she thinks is the right guy (James Dunn). They stay out all night together much to her reluctance, and the fact that she has a very domineering brother (William Pawley) makes her fear his reaction to her becoming engaged. While waiting for Dunn to show up so they can be married, she learns that he's moved out of his apartment and been fired from his job. Fortunately, she has a friend in the outspoken Minna Gombell who was prepared to marry her brother and walked out on him after he insulted his sister. This clever scene has Gombell seemingly supporting everything Pawley says to see how far he goes, and when his brutality takes an extremely cruel turn, the truth about how she feels comes out. Gombell is very clever in her admission of why she broke up with him, telling Eilers, ""He saved my life. They send you to the chair these days for killing your husband." Dunn shows his cynical sense of humor after hearing one of Eiler's neighbors fighting retorting, ""There's a tenement for you. A woman dies, a baby is born, and a guy's wife won't let him eat Limburger."This clever script is as juicy as anything they were writing over at Warner Brothers for Joan Blondell or Barbara Stanwyck to spout and just as filled with insinuations as the dialog that Mae West would soon be uttering over at Paramount. When Gombell comforts Eilers, she has tears behind her laughter, telling her younger brother when Dunn finally does show up, "Open the door, Floyd, and if it's a man selling coffins, tell them we'll take two!" The drama occurs because Dunn gives the insinuation that he doesn't want children, but she's pregnant from the night they stayed out planning their future together. Not necessarily a great husband, Dunn spends more time trying to find work (eventually turning to prizefighting) than supporting his pregnant wife which brings Gombell down on him. So is she really a bad girl? Obviously in the eyes of her brother who raised her after their parents died and is morally appalled by the fact that she would marry Dunn so quickly rather than get his approval. Crisply directed by Frank Borzage with an excellent screenplay, this is one of those early sound films that really sounds true to life and touches the emotions. Truly worth a re-discovery, and in viewing the film, it is easy to see why it won Oscars for screenplay and direction.

If there was ever a movie with a misleading title, this one is it. With the title, "Bad Girl," the fact that it's Pre-Code, and the movie poster showing a scantily-clad woman lounging in a chair with her arms raised, while a man leers suggestively over her shoulder – you think this movie is going to be about a woman of loose morals, like Jean Harlow or Marlene Dietrich.But it's not. Instead, it's a romantic melodrama that tells the story of a young married couple trying to make it through their first year of marriage during the Depression. Dorothy Haley (Sally Eiler) marries Eddie Collins (James Dunn), a tough talking "Noo Yawk" radio salesman, who is secretly a softie inside. In the movie's opening scenes, Dorothy is a streetwise dress model who easily parries the advances of men who make passes at her. But after she marries Eddie, she turns into an emotional girl with an overactive imagination. (When Eddie is late on their wedding day, Dorothy bursts into tears because she assumes he has deserted her.)Dorothy isn't really a "bad girl." She's just dumb as a box of rocks! Unfortunately, so is her husband. Eddie and Dorothy spend the movie trying to make each other happy, but they're both too stupid to realize they actually want the same things. This leads to an extended version of what Roger Ebert called the "Idiot Plot," where there are lame misunderstandings and the characters keep secrets from each other for no reason except that the plot requires it. If they would just tell each other those secrets, it would solve all their problems, but it would spoil the plot. It's called an "Idiot Plot" because the characters have to be idiots for it to work.Case in point. Soon after their marriage, Dorothy finds out she is pregnant. But Eddie has saved up $650 to open his own radio store. Not wanting him to spend his savings on her, Dorothy doesn't tell Eddie about the baby. Instead, she tells him she'd like to go back to work, to earn more money. From this, Eddie concludes she is unhappy living in their one-bedroom apartment. So he spends his $650 to buy them a big house and furniture, which Dorothy likes but didn't really want. Only then does she tell him she's pregnant.Now, this could have been handled as a variation on "The Gift of the Magi." But in the "Magi" story, the husband and wife actually learned something from their experience. Eddie and Dorothy learn nothing, and keep making the same dumb mistakes.Eddie and Dorothy each wrongly assume the other one doesn't want the baby, which results in more problems with their marriage. When Dorothy decides she needs an expensive doctor, Eddie tries to earn the money as a boxer. When he comes home with bandages on his face, Dorothy accuses him of going to a speakeasy and getting in a fight, instead of staying home with her. For some reason, Eddie doesn't tell her about the money he's won, or that he got her the doctor she wanted.(On a side note, the movie's one great scene is when Eddie steps into the ring with the Champ. He gets beaten up pretty bad and is about to go down when he whispers to the Champ that he needs the money because his wife is having a baby. The Champ says, "Well, why didn't ya say so? I got kids of my own!" He then literally carries Eddie around the ring for a few more rounds, all the time talking about his own kids.)If this story had been handled comically, it might have been a forerunner of "The Honeymooners" and "The Flintstones." (There were times when Eddie reminded me of Ralph Kramden.) Instead, we get a sappy romantic melodrama that is instantly forgettable.It's surprising that Frank Borzage won an Oscar for directing this claptrap, and that the lame screenplay won an Oscar as well. Borzage made better films than this (see "Seventh Heaven" and "Street Angel"), and there were better directed films released in 1931-32 (such as Charlie Chaplin's "City Lights," James Whale's "Frankenstein," William Wellman's "The Public Enemy," and Edmund Goulding's "Grand Hotel"). But AMPAS was young then, and young organizations are bound to make mistakes.

Mack Sennett once called Sally Eilers "the most beautiful brunette in Hollywood" and she was very eye catching, even in roles that didn't give her much to do. Then Frank Borzage started a hunt for a couple of unknowns for a film he was directing called "Bad Girl". Sylvia Sidney had starred in the original Broadway production which was an adaptation of a best selling book by Vina Delmar and ran for 85 performances in 1930. Borzage wanted to find a new romantic team to rival Janet Gaynor and Charles Farrell and originally he had wanted Spencer Tracy but he was unavailable. Sally was picked and for the male lead, a young, fresh faced actor from Broadway - James Dunn. For a film debut he had the ease and confidence of a veteran. He was sensational and should have been nominated for an Academy Award.This was not a typical "boy meets girl in the big city" romance. It had more in common with "The Crowd" although without "The Crowd"'s bleakness. When we first meet Dorothy (Sally Eilers) she is modeling bridal wear but she is not at all dewy eyed - she has all the answers and knows all the lines to keep the "wolves" at arms length. She meets Eddie (James Dunn) at Coney Island and while it definitely isn't "love at first sight", they end the evening in a heart to heart talk at the bottom of the stairs. Eddie is a rough diamond who claims he can't talk to women but somehow he seems to get on with Dorothy. Their's is a bitter sweet romance - it's real and something the audiences of the day could probably relate to. They marry and Eddie can see his long cherished dream of owning his own radio shop within his grasp. Sally has some news of her own - and after Eddie has a tirade about the stupidity of bringing a child into a world of poverty - confesses she is going to have a baby.The rest of the film is concerned with mistaken feelings. Eddie thinks Sally is not keen to have a child but she is only trying to hide her joy because of his gruffness. Inside he is tickled to death and often stops parents with prams in the street to ask their advice, he is also working overtime and risking his life doing amateur boxing to get Dorothy the best possible care. She doesn't know and thinks he is spending his time in bars and getting into fights. In one of the most heart wrenching scenes, James Dunn plays with all the emotion he can muster, trying to convince a society doctor to deliver Dorothy's baby. And for once a friend wasn't just part of the furniture. Minna Gombell was great as Edna, Dorothy's best friend and mentor. It was a 3 dimensional part - Edna was hard boiled and tough but astute enough to realise that Eddie was a genuine guy.This role should have made Sally a star but it didn't. She and Dunn were paired several times but she became fed up and apparently refused to do "Jimmy and Sally" with him (Claire Trevor was substituted). James Dunn became an overnight star. He was extremely likable and also had a warmth and talent that both critics and the public liked.Highly, Highly Recommended.