Merrily We Go to Hell

Directed by Dorothy Arzner, this 1932 Paramount film was made two years before the Hays Code began to be strictly enforced, and it is exactly the kind of picture that enraged religious groups into telling Hollywood to clean itself up. Jerry, an alcoholic newspaperman and aspiring playwright in Chicago, marries the wealthy heiress Joan, but when his play is staged in New York he encounters its star, his former lover, and gets drunk on opening night. Realizing she has been betrayed, Joan proposes a modern marriage in which both are free to see other people. The title comes from the toast Jerry repeats before every binge, and many newspapers of the day refused to run advertisements for the film because of it. Arzner was the only woman directing feature films at a Hollywood studio in the 1930s, the first woman admitted to the Directors Guild, and she had worked her way up from typist to script supervisor to editor, inventing the boom microphone in 1929 to give actors freedom to move. Cary Grant appears in a small part during his first year on screen. Reviews were mixed but it was among the more commercially successful films of the year. Criterion restored it in 4K in 2021 after the archival nitrate print turned out to have decayed beyond use. Who it's for: Anyone curious about pre Code Hollywood and Dorothy Arzner's perspective on women. Who it's not for: Not for viewers troubled by a narrative that romanticizes alcoholism, since the film treats it in the idiom of its era.