A scene from Merrily We Go to Hell.
Jerry and Joan meet over booze at a party, and Jerry steals a kiss. Joan muses as to why she let him do that, but she’s just charmed enough by him to go out on a date with him the next day. He learns that she’s the heir to a business fortune. She learns that he’s a drunken journalist who yearns to be a playwright. Perhaps she can get him to stop his drinking and turn his life around. But at what cost to her?
These are the fundamental questions driving Merrily We Go to Hell, a 1932 film directed by Dorothy Arzner that was the first screened as part of Best Video’s latest film series focusing on women directors. The series, which started on Tuesday night, continues with Julie Dash’s 1991 film Daughters of the Dust on Jan. 17; Nadine Labaki’s 2007 film Caramel on Jan. 24; and Lucrecia Martel’s 2001 film La Ciénaga on Jan. 31.
“With this series I wanted to highlight some of the pioneers, risk takers, and under-seen women behind the camera who 100 percent paved the way for so many artists today,” said host, curator, and Best Video staffer Raizine Bruton. In introducing Merrily We Go to Hell, Bruton noted that it was pre-code. “For those who may not know, pre-code refers to the period between the years 1927 and 1934, before Hollywood enforced censorship in its films” through a set of guidelines known as the Hays Code, which prevailed through 1968. “In pre-code films, there were things like sexual innuendo and romantic relationships between different races, and topics like infidelity and homosexuality, among others, were discussed regularly.” Merrily We Go to Hell involves infidelity and alcoholism and “takes a very critical look at marriage.”
Director Dorothy Arzner, “one of the few women who directed films during this time period,” Bruton said, “directed the first sound film for Paramount. She says she was able to be uncompromising in her decision making because films weren’t her main source of income.” That meant she could pass on projects she wasn’t interested in. “She wasn’t trying to survive.” She also wrote scripts and was an editor.
“I find the film to be an uncompromising look at how marriage can become prison-like,” Bruton said. “I’m still in awe of the decisions Dorothy Arzner was able to make to show a very realistic portrayal of how a woman might behave in the situation that our main character, Joan, finds herself in.” She was interested in discussing after the film whether the audience found it uncompromising as well, “particularly the ending.” With that framing, the audience settled in with popcorn and drinks to watch Merrily We Go to Hell.
The film tells the story of Joan Prentice and Jerry Corbett, whose marriage is marred by alcoholism before it even begins. They have a brief honeymoon period when Jerry sobers up and writes a play that ends up being picked up by a theater. It’s a hit, and Joan and Jerry find themselves wealthy. But Jerry’s play also puts him back in touch with an old flame, who’s still interested in him. He’s still interested in her, too. Their dalliance happens publicly; in response, Joan opens the marriage and begins her own flings. It all comes to an eventual tragic conclusion that this article will not spoil, but not before we’re treated to some frank conversations and depictions of opening a marriage in the 1930s, as well as portrayals of the louche drunken parties thrown by entertainment elites throughout Prohibition. Merrily We Go to Hell, in other words, offers much to talk about.
Brian Slattery Photo
Bruton.
The discussion began at the end, returning to whether the ending — which, again, this reporter won’t give away — was “uncompromising” in its depictions of a marriage marred by alcohol and emotionally toxic sexual experimentation.
“The last line” — (“my baby,” uttered by Joan) — “was really brutal to me,” said one audience member. “I thought of how, in the marriage, he,” meaning Jerry, “was her baby. She was responsible for taking care of him.” Jerry, the husband, “is a baby.”
“You don’t think he changed at all?” another audience member said. “He wasn’t drinking anymore. I think the movie wants us to believe he changed. Can people change?”
“I think people can change,” the first audience member said. “I’m not convinced we saw necessarily that he did, much.”
“I think it’s a very moralistic ending that’s typical of the pre-code films, of all Hollywood films, really,” said another participant. “What makes for a flaw here is that alcoholism becomes the primary theme.” It “is avoiding the issue of sexual transgression by inserting the idea that the husband is a drunk, and therefore his passions aren’t sane.” He had read up on Arzner, a lesbian working in Hollywood, and based on her recollections, he speculated that even though the film was made before Hollywood instituted its censorship codes, Arzner felt “hemmed in” by the code being on the horizon. “The Catholic Church had a big say” in Hollywood from the 1930s to the 1960s, and “she was the only female director working as a Hollywood contractor, who was also gay.” She was, he said, in a pretty tight spot.
The conversation turned to the part of the story where the couple shifts to having an open marriage, spurred initially by his infidelity. “It didn’t really look like her heart was in it,” said one audience member. “She wanted a traditional marriage, even if they were poorer.”
“She wanted him to freely decide to be with her,” said another audience member. “Not by force. The freedom is essential here.”
“She kept giving him the freedom,” said the first audience member. “This was not a romance.”
“We’re talking about the real thing, real love here.”
Bruton had mentioned earlier that she had noticed new things in the movie on the second time around, and in listening to the audience discuss it. It gave her more insight into the deep flaws in Joan’s and Jerry’s marriage and Jerry’s flings. “He blames her” — his lover — “for his alcoholism,” Bruton said, rather than taking responsibility himself. And those around him let him do it.
“This is a very typical marriage of alcoholic people, or people with drug addictions,” said an audience member. “A lot of us stay with our husbands and wives through alcohol and drugs. We try to work something out inside, either try to fix ourselves or fix them, try to get approval the right way, have things go the right way.… There’s always a lot of heart work and hard work. If you’re married to an alcoholic or a drug addict and you love them, then you go through all kinds of stuff to stay with them.”
“And you do things you normally wouldn’t do,” Bruton said.
“And it’s not the life you want,” the audience member continued.
Another audience member noticed Jerry’s lack of a “support group” outside of Joan. “Joan’s father hates him. His friends seem at a loss with him.” Though “a lot of his torment seems to be self-imposed. Not to excuse his behavior, but she’s constantly compromising for him.”
“Compromising herself,” another audience member added.
“I don’t think he really deserves her, at the end of the day,” the audience member continued.
The conversation then turned back to the couple’s open relationship. “This is a hard conversation to have even in this day and age,” said one audience member. “I know people that have poly relationships, and they’re hard, too. Everybody has to work on all their relationships if you want to have them.”
In time the conversation swung back to Arzner herself and the difficulties she faced as a woman director in the film industry. “Was the ending what she wanted it to be necessarily?” Bruton asked. And more broadly, “why did she stop working in films? That happened to women then, but it’s happening to women all the time.” She noted that Julie Dash, who came out with Daughters of the Dust, the next film in the series, in 1991, is only now working on her next film, decades later. Women directors are often all but invisible; at least for New Haven, this series is hoping to rectify that situation.
For a list of the films screened in Best Video’s film series about women directors, and more information, visit Best Video’s website.
