Prosperity

I am not familiar with Marie Dressler at all so I approached this unprimed without any preconceptions whatsoever. As a Dressler virgin, I found this difficult to get into, it feels like it was made for her fans.

A lot of us grew up watching Laurel and Hardy on the tv so when we watch them now it's with a sense of nostalgia. They're likeable because we feel we know those guys intimately. Because we like them we can relate to them and laugh along with them. However had we never seen a L&H film and stumbled upon one, to be honest I doubt we'd find them as funny. For this type of comedy to work, it's essential that we like the characters. Comedy is very much a two way process and so without knowing who Marie Dressler is, this just leaves the uninitiated cold. This might work for her fans but my excuse would be: It not you Marie, it's me.

This film however is not just comedy. It's also a full blown melodrama with a serious dark sub-plot - comedy from a dark place is always more effective and there aren't much darker places than The Depression. The subject of this film is the United States banking crisis of the 1930s. Whilst this is a really fascinating subject to study, it clearly wasn't fun if you had to live through it so making light of people's misery peppered with trite optimistic and patriotic speeches was not what people who had just lost their jobs and homes wanted to hear.

This subject was handled much better in Frank Capra's fantastic AMERICAN MADNESS made a few months after this one. That however benefited from being released at the same time FDR was just taking charge of America and also from a typically impassioned performance from Mr integrity himself, Walter Huston. That was also written by the great Robert Riskin whereas this wasn't which is a big factor. Irving Thalberg's sister's script is ok, Sam Wood's direction is a bit more pedestrian than usual but ok and the acting is ok but this relies too much on the appeal of Miss Dressler.