Summer Under the Stars 2011 -- Day Twenty-Two Review: Sadie McKee

Every now and again, a movie will surprise me, either by being much better or much worse than I expected it to be before watching it. This happened a number of times during my big movie project last year: Caged, Tarzan the Ape Man, and Ringside Maisie were all better than I anticipated; Wuthering Heights and The Searchers were worse. Most of the time, my surprise comes from what I presume to know about certain films' genres, stars, or reputations; for example, I generally don't have much interest in Westerns, but on an individual basis I often love them, and the same goes for smaller films like Woman Wanted or Trade Winds. And it's certainly the case for Sadie McKee, a woman's film released in 1934 and starring Joan Crawford.

To say I expected Sadie McKee to be awful isn't true: I simply didn't expect it to be anything special. Women's films can often come across as melodramatic today, and while I admire Joan Crawford's screen presence and haven't ever seen her give a bad performance, I've also never connected with her the way I have with actresses like Vivien Leigh or Bette Davis. What's more, on paper, Sadie McKee seems exactly like every other women's film released during the thirties: Crawford plays Sadie, a maid who runs off to New York with her boyfriend Tommy (Gene Raymond) and then finds herself stranded when he abandons her for a traveling singer (Esther Ralston) whom he believes will further his music career. To make ends meet, Sadie becomes a dancer in a night club, where she meets and wins the favor of a millionaire (Edward Arnold) whom she soon marries and helps cure of his alcoholism. Along the way, she still pines for Tommy and spurns the "help" of her former employers' son (Franchot Tone), who conceals his affection for her by criticizing her at every turn. There is mercifully no out-of-wedlock baby involved, but the entire rags-to-riches motif is as strong here as it ever was.

What makes Sadie McKee surprising -- and surprisingly good -- is the superb cinematography, camera work and, above all else, musical selections, the latter a rare quality in a non-musical classic film. The performances are all excellent, with everyone from Crawford to Ralston shining in their parts, but what really stood out to me was the way director Clarence Brown set the mood for each scene with impeccable lighting, costuming, and set design, and then overlaid it all with unusually good music. Sadie McKee introduced the song "All I Do Is Dream Of You," which most people probably recognize in its peppier form from Singin' in the Rain, but the slowed-down version is beautiful, and the scene where Raymond first sings to the song to Crawford, in a run-down boarding house where Tommy and Sadie are staying before getting married, is a masterwork of combining image and sound to create a specific mood. I can't find that scene online, but the reprise of the song, when Sadie has already married the millionaire and hasn't seen Tommy in years, is almost as good:

The only downside to Sadie McKee, aside from the occasionally predictable story, is the fact that Crawford and Raymond don't have as much chemistry as Crawford and Tone, or Raymond and Ralston. We know from the beginning that Sadie and Michael (Tone) are going to end up together, not just because the story wants it that way but also because they have genuine electricity between them (which makes sense, as Crawford and Tone were married in real life); furthermore, although Ralston plays the film's only villain, she and Raymond click together in a way that Raymond and Crawford don't. Take a look at the scene where Tommy and Dolly (Ralston) first meet:

Granted, Ralston is not a great singer, which makes her an odd choice to play a professional singer in a movie, but she has a fun, sparkling energy that works well with Raymond, whereas most of his scenes with Crawford are romantic but deadly serious. Ralston is also styled rather unusually in this film, in that her makeup is subdued and her clothes relatively simple, giving her a naturally pretty quality that further enhances her character. Ralston was a popular actress during the silent era who found less work during the thirties, and although our sympathies are always firmly with Crawford in Sadie McKee, Ralston almost makes us understand how Tommy could leave Sadie, thereby making him more sympathetic and the ending of the film all the more tragic, as well.

Grade: A-