Dinner at Eight

A drawing-room comedy made by MGM's method of loading every star into one picture, from the Broadway play by George S. Kaufman and Edna Ferber. Millicent Jordan is arranging a dinner and gathers her guests one by one. Along the way the film enters each of their homes: her husband, a shipping owner about to go under; a washed-up alcoholic actor; a coarse new-money businessman; and his wife, who is deceiving him. The dinner is never shown. The film ends as the guests go in to the table; what it is actually doing is reading the collapse of a class during the Depression off a guest list. George Cukor directed and David O. Selznick produced. Marie Dressler, John Barrymore, Wallace Beery and Jean Harlow star. Its closing exchange is among the best known in cinema: Harlow says she has read that machinery will one day take over every profession, and Dressler looks her over and answers in a way that suggests she need not worry. Who it is for: viewers who like 1930s Hollywood comedy and ensemble storytelling. Who it is not for: anyone who wants pace. It is all talk, it keeps the smell of the stage, and some of its stories close inside a single scene.