The Man in Possession

Raymond, just out of prison and disowned by his family, takes work as a bailiff's man. His first job is to sit in a woman's house over an unpaid debt. She is in debt but about to marry a rich man, and if the seizure is seen the engagement is finished. She proposes that Raymond pose as her butler. The film is not interested in romance. It is interested in everyone performing: she has to look rich, he plays a servant, and his family pretends not to know either of them. The film openly mocks the game of climbing. The form is pre-code comedy: fast dialogue, doorway scenes and frank sexual implication. After 1934 those lines would have been cut. Sam Wood directed. MGM would remake the same story a few years later for Jean Harlow and Robert Taylor; made under the enforced code, that version had most of the sharpness filed off. Robert Montgomery plays Raymond and Irene Purcell the woman, with Charlotte Greenwood carrying the comedy. Who it is for: viewers who like pre-code Hollywood comedy. Who it is not for: anyone looking for plot. The story is a single misunderstanding and the last section is tied up in a hurry.