Best movie of this year hands down!

Am i the only one who thinks........Average?

I am only giving this movie a 1 for the great cast, though I can't imagine what any of them were thinking. This movie was horrible

a film so unique, intoxicating and bizarre that it not only demands another viewing, but is also forgivable as a satirical comedy where the jokes eventually take the back seat.

Bennett's screen image was that of a sophisticated girl who knew how to take care of herself and get what she wanted. Her fans (wrote Griffith & Mayer) believed she would get out of traps that would hold them fast. Surprisingly then, in this film she's passive, unambitious and defeated at the ripe old age of 20 something. Makes me wonder what her benefactor, Menjou, saw in her that kept him interested for several years.The beginning scene in the tenement apartment is terrific, the crowded setting warm and cozy as the family members get ready to start the day. The entire cast is perfect. Gable is very watchable and it's easy to see he would soon be a star. Montgomery is charming and believable when he tells Bennett he knows about her and Menjou but he loves her and wants to marry her as long as there is no more dilly dallying with Menjou. Rambeau is especially good in the scene where she refuses to loan Bennett $100 (a lot of money in 1931), telling her to get off her high horse and do what Rambeau does to support herself. And the generous but not-the-marrying-kind Menjou is likable and his suits are beautifully cut and fitted.And Anita Page is excellent. A commenter asks what happened to Page's career. In 1930 Page was a star. In 1931 she was a supporting player. In 1933 her MGM contract was not renewed and she retired. Studio politics is what happened to the star who was second in popularity to Garbo.So there was another ending filmed but not used. My guess is that a despairing Bennett jumped onto the RR tracks, ala Anna Karenina, or teamed up with Rambeau as a I-hate-men gold digger.

As sound and dialog came to films the Broadway stage became more and more a source for movie properties even if they had to go back considerable ways for material. The Easiest Way was a play written by James Walter and produced by that eminent showman David Belasco first in 1909. It was most typical of the Edwardian era morality works that Belasco so favored.It could never be done today, in fact it was barely acceptable in 1931 for its incredibly anti-feminist stand. According to the character played by Marjorie Rambeau men rule, make said rules, and women just have to deal with it. Submit cheerfully to being wives and mothers with some occasional outside work if you can fit it in.Constance Bennett with her small job in a department store doesn't think this is all that's for her. She help supports her parents J. Farrell MacDonald and Clara Blandick and a couple of small brothers. Sister Anita Page is getting ready to marry honest laundry man Clark Gable who has some most chauvinistic views about women, but also about the value of honesty and hard work. So when advertising executive Adolphe Menjou suggest to Bennett that they shack up, she's ready to take The Easiest Way and go for a life of luxury. That is until she meets newspaperman Robert Montgomery who's ready to marry her once he gets back from a long assignment in Argentina. Without going into details Bennett makes a holy hash of her life and those tried and true standards of the time for women serve as a lesson to her and all in the audience. Be good wives and mothers and don't take The Easiest Way to prosperity.The original play only had six characters and so it was expanded considerably at MGM and updated to Depression times where such lessons were not completely appreciated. Still this cast did manage to put it over.The Easiest Way was the first film at MGM for Clark Gable who was billed eighth down in the cast. By the end of the decade Gable was acknowledged King of Hollywood before Elvis was known as the King. Nearly all the players billed above him would be below him in cast lists in the future. His appeal on the screen was immediately discernible and in the end of this film, he's given a bit of humanity and shown as not the blue nose stinker you might originally have thought him to be. The Easiest Way is way old fashioned for today, I doubt too many stock companies do the original play today. Still some will find it a curiosity and Gable is always good to watch.

Precode movies are always interesting because the plot lines were so cutting edge for their era and often still are for now. While the idea of a kept woman may seem quaint by today's morality, the deeper argument of men controlling a woman's life is still relevant today. A woman could/can use her beauty to gain quick and easy access to wealth. But when the beauty fades so may the access to wealth. Men controlled the jobs a woman could get, her access to society, and even her access to her own family. I was disappointed that the kept woman was so lazy about her circumstances. It took the older kept woman to wake her up to the reality of her situation. On the other hand there is the sister - who gets ahead the 'right' way. She starts out a tenement brat - and ends up a neat happy homemaker with an adorable kid & a good husband. It took time and hard work but she made the comfortable life eventually. There are other things that are worth looking at in this film - Advertising - once upon a time all print advertising was created by artists, with live models. Pencil & paint and cramping muscles. Poverty - Hot crowded tenements with thin, malnourished undereducated people. No privacy, no quiet, no prospects, no reason to play by the rules. Social Security - Once upon a time the old and tired were on their own. If they washed up at 65 with no money - and too tired and broke down to keep working - there was no safety net - just a cheap boarding house that locked you out when you missed the rent. When the prospects are dismal - who can blame a kid for taking the easy way out.

Constance Bennett stars as a lower class girl who takes the easy way. That is, she becomes a kept women. We see her in beautiful gown, in jewels, in furs. Adolph Menjou is footing the bill.Then she meets newspaperman Robert Montgomery and wants to give it all up for true love. I won't reveal the ending. But it's not an especially happy one, and three cheers to Hollywood for not selling out.A few comments on the perfumers: . Robert Montgomery is not someone I can imagine anyone's throwing over even a modest income for.. Clark Gable has a fairly small role here. He plays, with of course no mustache, Bennett's proper working class and disapproving brother-in-law.. Bennett is chic as she always is. But she isn't photographed in a faltering manner. Her profile is rather flat. She appears to have an overbite and her false eyelashes seem apparent. Maybe the director of photography and she did not get on well.. The brilliant Marjorie Rameau turns in the earliest of her fine performances that I have seen. She plays another kept woman. When Bennett is down on her luck and asks for a loan, she sends her packing. But when her daddy dies, she comes to Bennett for money and is given it.Her performance is in a different realm from that of any of the other players in this movie.Bennett is a strangely forgotten star of early movies. Rambeau is a sadly underrated actress, whose career spanned several decades.