Robert Florey's Smarty (1934)

Smarty was released by Warner Brothers in 1934, just before the Production Code began to be enforced, and is usually lumped in with other pre-code films for its sex and violence.  Although there is much that has been written lately about pre-Code films and what they have in common there has been little analysis of the directors who worked during this period.  Smarty was one of four films directed by Robert Florey in 1934, a native of France who came to America, after working with Melies and Feuillade, in the silent era to learn about films and then to direct them.  Although I have not seen most of Florey's films one can read my previous entries on Bedside (1934), The House on 56th Street (1933) and The Face Behind the Mask (1941) to see how Florey was interested in the quirky, strange and hidden aspects of American life.  Smarty is about consensual sadomasochism.

When her husband Warren William slaps his wife Joan Blondell during a bridge game for saying "diced carrots" Blondell files immediately for divorce.  There is a strong suggestion that William is only capable of sex when he and Blondell are role-playing and doesn't like it when she refers to his impotence in front of other people.  Blondell gets a divorce, marries her lawyer Edward Everett Horton and then provokes Horton to slap her; when he does she leaves him and returns to William, telling him once they are alone to "hit me again." The other main characters are Frank McHugh, playing a bachelor; Claire Dodd, a woman who has been divorced several times and known for her bed-hopping, and Joan Wheeler, who plays a married woman who hooks up with the divorced William and is always worried that it is her husband knocking at the door.

Everyone in Smarty is randy in one way or another; the opening shot of Smarty is similar to that of Bedside:  a lovely woman's leg in a sheer stocking.  Smarty is subversive towards traditional sexual roles and Florey was able to continue with these kinds of observations well into the enforcement of the production code by working somewhat under the radar on B pictures (Smarty has a running time of 65 minutes) with relatively low budgets.