Reckless (1935)

Powerful

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

William Powell is delightful, Jean Harlow is warm and vulnerable, Rosalind Russell is charming, and even Franchot Tone, who plays a millionaire playboy who jilts Russell for Harlow without truly knowing his own mind, is witty. The dialog, particularly in the first half of the movie, is light and amusing, and there are a couple of nice musical numbers. It gets a little fast paced and soap operatic towards the end, but it's always entertaining. This is the film that got Powell and Harlow together personally for the last two years of her life, and their chemistry shows. The early scene with them lounging together and him proposing in his own way as she drowses off is fantastic, and Powell's scenes with the old granny are also priceless. It's also fun to see a young Mickey Rooney in a couple of scenes. Not perfect but watch this one for the cast and their performances.

...this movie rapidly descends into maudlin melodrama that is practically unwatchable. The movie starts out with promise with a feisty Granny Lesie (May Robson) pulling a rather hung over Ned Riley (William Powell) out of bed to bail playful star Mona Leslie (Jean Harlow) out of jail. These early scenes would make any fan of these three want to stick around for more, but believe me, you'll regret that decision. Things go downhill rapidly when Mona meets avid fan and drunken playboy Bob Harrison Jr. (Franchot Tone), whose enthusiasm wanes and drunkenness worsens after the two are hastily married. Every indignity you can think of is flung at Harlow's character at a time in Harlow's life when she herself had recently been through a great personal tragedy, and you just get the feeling that MGM is using that tragedy to sell movie tickets. It really is a sad spectacle for any Harlow fan.The melodrama grows to ridiculous proportions by the end of the film, with Mona Leslie even being booed by fans and her giving a preposterous on stage speech as a result. All of this just crowds out any promise with which the film started. Avoid this one.

This starts off as an innocuous pleasure. Harlow & Powell both sparkle, the musical numbers are enjoyable, and "Granny" is delightfully comic. Some of the other supporting players are also excellent, including a really young Rosalind Russell. You'll also see Mickey Rooney when he was just a kid actor--no shtick.Was this movie written by a committee? Suddenly with a thud, or, you might say, a bang, the movies crashes into melodrama-land. I've never seen such a jarring shift, and totally unbelievable. You feel you've been totally had, and the slight compensations the movie offers are just not worth it. Don't just pass on this movie--boycott it.

This being Black History Month, I checked this movie out from the library because IMDb mentioned this among the films that had Nina Mae McKinney in it, specifically the "Reckless" number. Well, she's in it all right, at the end of the song when, after the Jean Harlow character gets murdered near the number's end, Ms. McKinney sings the final verses. Trouble is, her singing is in a group shot at that end that's so far away you can't really see her on the television screen. I'm thinking this has to do with the fact that, unless they played domestics, black performers weren't allowed to be on the same screen as their white counterparts, not unlike the line in Show Boat that I saw and heard this morning about the same thing concerning the play in there when Julie almost got arrested. While I was looking for Nina during the rest of the picture, I got mostly bored with the plot of the triangle between Harlow, William Powell, and Franchot Tone. It was interesting when I recognized many of the supporting players: Nat Pendleton, Ted Healy after leaving The Three Stooges to Columbia, May Robson, Rosalind Russell, a 14 year-old Mickey Rooney in a couple of scenes, frequent Marx Brothers foil Margaret Dumont as one of the women at the end yelling at the Harlow character to get off the stage, and, as the jockey Gold Dust, former "Our Gang"-er Allen "Farina" Hoskins. Other than that, the dialogue went for such long stretches, especially when the Powell character was drunk, that I was just waiting for the movie to end. I did sort of liked the final 5 minutes but that's it. So for all that, I don't really recommend Reckless.