Director Alfred E. Green is not a familiar name to most moviegoers, even though he directed more than 100 movies from 1917 to 1954 and is included in Jean-Pierre Melville's "pantheon of sixty-four pre-war American directors." I haven't seen very many of Green's films but he was obviously happy making pre-code films at Warner Brothers in the early thirties and The Rich Are Always with Us was one of five films he made in 1932, including the impressive Union Station.
The film stars Ruth Chatterton, who was forty and nearing the end of her film career, and Bette Davis, who was twenty-four and at the beginning of her film career. In the complex relationships in the film George Brent is pursuing Ruth Chatterton while Bette Davis pursues Brent. Chatterton and Davis are both wealthy and prefer Brent because he actually works for a living, as a writer. The film begins with Chatterton and Brent having dinner at a restaurant where Chatterton's husband is dining with his latest floozy. Chatterton later finds her husband kissing the floozy (played by Adrienne Dore) and leaves for a divorce in Paris, pursued by Brent who in turn is pursued by Davis.
Green and cinematographer Ernest Haller focus mostly on Davis and Chatterton, beautifully backlit, and on their clothes, furnishings, and motorcars; Brent, whose appeal is mysterious to a modern viewer, is mostly seen struggling with his typewriter. In the double standard common at the time Brent is not seen as a gold-digger after the wealthy Chatterton in the way Dore is in her pursuit of Chatterton's husband (played by John Milan, who appeared in eleven movies in 1932). A great deal happens in this seventy-four minute film: laughter and tears, triumph and tragedy, beauty and ugliness. The witty script is by Austin Parker, from E Pettit's novel, and includes plenty of references to sex and infidelity as well as alcohol and opium.
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