the thorpe sisters do a great job of representing how people cope with 2020: you’re either june in her cute hat waving a gun around and calling herself cuckoo or you’re mae taking one sip of gin and immediately passing out. most days I’m both.

tired: angry father commandeers shotgun wedding
wired: angry sister commandeers shotgun wedding

also when mae laughed so hard she passed out that was me watching HOWARD THE DUCK last night

I cannot believe that the most likable romantic lead in this movie is the one who doesn't end up in a relationship at the end! The absolute disrespect on Pat Kelly's good name!

Imagine finding a job and meeting the man you’re going to marry on your first day in a new city!!! Also sometimes you have to hold your sister’s man at gunpoint for him to marry her and that’s OK. Personally really obsessed with everything so I’m just going to follow my heart and rate it really high sorry!

At the 64 minute mark, June gets randomly catcalled by an unseen cab driver, gets distracted and bumps into a fence and the movie keeps on rolling though she's still dwelling on it until she runs into another character. If you want to see something in a woman-directed picture versus one from a man, I think that's a pretty good moment.

Do you have a gun? We’re going to a wedding.

La solidarité entre les sœurs est très belle, et c'est à se demander pourquoi Mae doit finir avec son homme, qui est salaud envers elle (l'autre prétendant n'est pas vraiment mieux). On dirait que chez Arzner les hommes vont toujours trahir les femmes, alors elle doit négocier avec les conventions de la romcom pour que ses protagonistes finissent quand même avec; ici, ça prend une sœur qui force un homme à se marier pour le bien de sa sœur en le menaçant avec un pistolet. Il n'en est pas moins salaud, mais c'est une manière pas mal drôle d'au moins lui retirer toute volonté. Il a été vraiment cave de préférer une autre femme à Mae, alors on le ramène à la vérité pourtant sous ses yeux avec ce fusil. Le film est assez inégal, mais je dois dire que je trouve ça assez audacieux.

Above-average pre-code rom com. I suppose the point is we don't get to choose with whom we have chemistry, but those guys were terrible.

Two sisters walk up the stairs of their rooming house, having just made curfew. They argue about the men they have met on their first day as working girls in New York. One, who is worn out from the telegraph desk and a dinner date, can barely keep all her suitor’s gifts in hand (bottle of perfume, box of candy, orchid corsage, eventually her own exhausted high heels). The other is empty handed, believing she has found true love.

A scene like this reminds me of Sex and the City, except it also reminds me that within Working Girls’  lively debate of modern sexual mores there is actually something at stake: whether these girls can have sex and still survive in the city. 

More probing and complex than most films made about women now. Uncompromising, dark, and also quite funny.

👯‍♀️👯‍♀️👯‍♀️👯‍♀️

It took me several sittings to get through this very brief film. Admittedly, I didn't give it the attention it probably deserves, but that's partially due to the film not getting me to care about much of anything and finding it unfunny and rather boring. Still curious about Dorothy Arzner's other films as there are not enough female directors in general but especially in the early days of cinema.

An overall fun movie (of course it is, it's Dorothy Arzner) but I'm SO MAD that the only man in this film who isn't garbage ends up not getting a love interest at the end. One of the romantic leads fires his employee because she rejects his advances and the other leaves his girlfriend to be with someone else and they end up with partners, but my man Pat Kelly buys his date perfume, flowers, AND an umbrella, and later gives her a GUN to brandish to force her sister's boyfriend to marry her, and he ends up with no one??! Love truly doesn't make sense and this is the proof

Fun.

Good story, but the film is hampered by some poor acting by the most critical player (Dorothy Hall). Odd to see so many prominent names in the cast, but all in supporting or bit parts.

The costuming in this was AMAZING. Adorable movie

The two lead women are incredibly charming and there's some fun pre-code sauciness but this isn't too special otherwise

It gets a bit funnier by the end, but it doesn't really land on a consistent tone until the final reel or so. It's mostly a comedy, I guess, but a not very funny one with some melodrama thrown in.

June has much more main character energy than Mae, but her plot still felt much more like the side storyline of the film. Everything was very neat and on place however, both girls got enough screen time to me and their sisterly relationship was extremely well developed and realistic. All I love about Dorothy Arzner was in this picture and that itself would be enough for me to like it and when you add some extremely fun players in the mix, you’re really looking at something.

Hear me out, what if Dorothy Arzner had directed Stage Door? Nothing against Gregory La Cava of course, the film is a masterpiece, but yeah I’m just thinkin-

- this review was sponsored by @thenoirestnoir go follow her!

People just don’t say “go on high hap me you poor simp hand me a laugh” anymore. 

Sudbury, MA. Laptop. Criterion Channel.

this was a fun watch, really ahead of its time in some aspects being directed and written by women in the 30s. it’s not a masterpiece but still great.

cute!

I’ve been into plots about sisters for some reason recently: loved the realistic way May and June squabble over petty things before immediately making up and how they keep giving each other life advice from what they perceive to be a place of hard-won wisdom. I may not have a sister of my own, but I’m making “I would force a man to marry you at gunpoint” my new oath of loyalty to my closest friends.

“have you got a gun? … we’re going to a wedding!”

this film is really dragged down by dorothy hall who is just terrible with her extremely annoying voice and overwrought performance (she sounds like lena lamont but worse :/). other than that, it’s a fine pre-code rom dram/com. not dorothy arzner’s best but they can’t all be!