100 Men and a Girl

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Audience Member This delightful family picture reflects how the public taste changes over the years. Movies, in general, were kinder to serious music then, something that no studio would even consider in tackling these days. This was a vehicle for Deanna Durbin, who reigned supreme at Universal and who had movies tailor made for her to showcase her talents. Ms. Durbin was a cute young girl in those years. She was wonderful in the way she projected charm without being obnoxious, or bratty. Her singing voice was amazing and it was always prominently heard in all the movies she made. The story is something typical of those years. Director Harry Koster was able to present the material in a good fashion. The film follows Ms. Durbin in her quest to help her impoverished father and his musician friends. With the help of the rich Frosts, she is able to bring together the talented unemployed music men into forming an orchestra and convincing the great Leopold Stokowski to make music with them. The film will not disappoint Ms. Durbin's fans. Adolph Menjou plays her father. The wonderful Alice Brady and Eugene Palette are seen as the generous Frosts, and Mischa Auer plays the family friend Michael. Rated 3.5/5 Stars •  Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars 02/08/23 Full Review Steve D not enough to the story but I love Durbin. Rated 3/5 Stars •  Rated 3 out of 5 stars 03/09/24 Full Review Audience Member The title of this film would suggest something in the style of Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954) as it is ripe with the opportunity to infer that wholesome child star Deanna Durbin is romantically involved with a large number of men, she has been kidnapped by them or something even worse. Because this film was made during the 1930s and child stars were box office gold during the Great Depression I had a fair understanding of what this film was going to be like before I watched and was saddened when it was almost exactly like the atrocious Durbin vehicle Three Smart Girls (1936). For those who are irritated by Durbin this will be over eighty minutes of hell and I am shocked that I managed to force myself to sit through it. Failed trombone player John Cardwell, Adolphe Menjou, tries his hardest to become employed in the orchestra of famed conductor Leopold Stokowski but is pushed away by his entourage. Concerned because without a job he will not be able to pay his rent and support his precocious teenage daughter Patricia "Patsy", Deanna Durbin, he takes advantage of finding a dropped wallet on the footpath and uses the money in it to pay his rent. His grateful landlady Mrs. Tyler, Alma Kruger, assumes that he has gotten a job with Stokowski and when Patsy quickly cottons on to the idea Cardwell finds himself pretending to go to work the next day. When Patsy attempts to visit her father at the theater she finds out about his lie and decides to return the wallet to it's wealthy owner. The owner, Mrs. Frost, Alice Brady, who is charmed by her plucky spirit and agrees to sponsor a new orchestra if she can organize one. She goes about doing this and attracts the attention of Stokowski with her soprano voice along the way. My biggest issue with the two Durbin vehicles I have seen is that the characters she plays feel more like the idea of a teenage girl as written by a middle aged male screenwriter without children than like anything resembling a human being. She is incredibly annoying instead of being plucky and charming as she is meant to be and her endless chattering is excruciating to listen to as she has a high pitched, reedy voice that gets old quickly and is difficult to swallow when it is forced upon you. Charles Kenyon, Bruce Manning and James Mulhauser worked as screenwriters on countless films of this sort and they all had a generic, grossly inauthentic feel to them which makes it hard to enjoy them. Durbin herself is partly to blame for how irritating the characters she plays are as she doesn't let up with the forced smiles, out of nowhere singing and over the top gestures that suggest an actress who has been trained to the point of seeming robotic. She is meant to be the major selling point of the film and because I do not enjoy her performance I found the film in it's entirety to be insufferable. There have been a few cases of films that I have found it nearly impossible to push through when watching some of these early Best Picture nominees and this was one of them. This is despite the film being so short and while it wasn't as much of a trial as Cleopatra (1963) you would hope a film so brief would not feel 4 hours long. I can not say that the film ever visually impressed as at least Three Smart Girls featured some inspired camerawork and none of the supporting players were able to save the film. Menjou is typically a reliable acting but he fades into the background here as he doesn't bring any European glamour or refinement to the film and isn't particularly funny with what little he is given. Director Henry Koster, responsible for almost exclusively middlebrow trash, also doesn't dress up any of the dull scenes in the film with some edgy camerawork or an attempt at doing something new and different. A simply insufferable little film that I hope is never inflicted on modern audiences at any point in time. Rated 1/5 Stars •  Rated 1 out of 5 stars 02/01/23 Full Review Audience Member The best musical movie ever made! Rated 5/5 Stars •  Rated 5 out of 5 stars 02/26/23 Full Review Audience Member Possibly Deanna Durbin's best film, an excellent showcase for her young talents and an adept mix of popular ("It's Raining Sunbeams") and classical (Leopold Stokowski) music. Rated 4.5/5 Stars •  Rated 4.5 out of 5 stars 02/27/23 Full Review Audience Member Sweet and apparently very popular in 1937. Does not really hold up over time, but is nice and easy to watch. The orchestra music is well done and Deanna Durbin is fine. Rated 3/5 Stars •  Rated 3 out of 5 stars 02/24/23 Full Review Read all reviews

100 Men and a Girl

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