Once aboard the Zeppelin the whole pace and mood changes, and it becomes the kind of wild, vulgar, spectacular, no-holds-barred frolic that all DeMille films are supposed to be and almost never are.
--William K. Everson, Notes on Madam Satan. The New School, March 19, 1971,
In the seventies I went to Everson's film programs at The New School every Friday night; after seeing Citizen Kane at MoMA I went everywhere to see every movie I could in order to gradually develop my own taste. Most of what Everson showed was very much off the beaten track, obscure movies that few remember even now. Everson collected 16 mm. prints and always stayed to talk about the films he showed for as long as anyone had questions. Everson was always ready to help film researchers and showed me a print in his apartment of the original Lewis Milestone film of The Front Page (1931)when I was writing an article about the Billy Wilder version. Everson also loaned me a print of John Ford's Wagon Master (1950)to show to a graduate school seminar when I was studying the visual relationships between Ford and Frederick Remington. More on Everson another time; I am just leading up to when I first saw Madam Satan, at a showing by Everson at The New School, It was an astonishing film to me then and still is now.
Turner Classic Movies recently showed Madam Satan as a tribute to its fine editor, Anne Bauchens. The film was written by three women -- Jeanie Macpherson, Gladys Unger, Elsie Janis --and has positive and complex views of women and marriage. Kay Johnson is having marital troubles with her husband, played by Reginald Denny. In the first part of the film Johnson tracks down Denny's mistress, played by Lillian Roth, whom friend Roland Young claims is his wife. Confusion reigns, with much hiding under blankets and slamming of doors and Denny and Johnson part ways, though not before Young and Denny take a shower together (they are admittedly inebriated and fully dressed). Some have unfavorably compared this part of the film with Lubitsch --Everson says the DeMille lacks grace --but it is intentionally more of a sexual farce than the sly humor of Lubitsch.
Denny and Young head to a costume party on a dirigible moored above Central Park that is wild indeed, art-directed to a fare-thee-well by Mitch Leisen, with crazy costumes and art deco furnishings, lots of erotic dancing (led by Lillian Roth) and hot music. Kay Johnson comes disguised as Madam Satan, ready to take any man to hell (Roland Young says, "It's a waste to take any married man to hell") and her husband falls for her when they dance together. She reveals herself just as the dirigible is hit by lightning and starts to break up as it drifts away. Kay has a parachute but gives it to Lillian Roth when Roth says, "I don't want your husband, I want a parachute!" but Denny gives Kay his. Kay lands on a couple necking in a convertible, Denny jumps into the reservoir just before the dirigible crashes, Roland Young lands in a tree in the lions' den.
The film is a mixture of genres -- romantic comedy, musical, disaster movie-- that has much to say about the roles of women in society. DeMille unfortunately never made a movie quite like it again, sticking with Westerns and biblical dramas and eschewing the chronicles of human behavior that he had been doing since Male and Female (1919). Also, unfortunately, as studios became more comfortable with sound they became more conservative and there were fewer and fewer female screenwriters and editors.
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