Mills of the Gods

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Audience Member Last night's line-up at Film Forum's "Breadlines and Champagne" Depression/Recession festival featured pre-code films at their best—not because they are racy (though Ex-Lady is, a bit) or because they're racist, but because they all featured high-powered career women who run their sex lives as efficiently as their businesses. Of course, the final minutes of each film flips back on its promises and silences the woman with a wedding—pre-code audiences, it seems, for all their delight in debauchery, couldn't stand the precedent of a single girl having a happy ending all to herself. Mills of the Gods is the only exception to that rule, perhaps because its didactic intentions are more pointedly about class than gender warfare. A nerves-of-steel matriarch who has run a mill since her husband's death finally decides to retire, but none of her family members—a lay-about son, a fur-collecting daughter, a saucy granddaughter, and a weakling grandson—want to take over; they are having too good a time spending her fortune in Europe. When the Depression threatens business to the point that the mill may close, and the workers rise up in revolt, she sends for them all, and they return to the states. But they refuse to give up their personal trust fund to keep the business going, and plan their return overseas. Before they leave, though, the leader of the labor rabble seduces the saucy granddaughter; she drives him up to a woodland hideout and then spends the night (though he cooks the dinner and she invites him to her bed). After that, she's a convert, and convinces her brother to vote along with her and grandma to release the trust fund and reopen the mill. Her one-time lover refuses to remain with her (her only punishment for transgressing society's sexual morays) because of their economic differences, but she and grandma ride off happily ever after, career women to the death. Rated 3.5/5 Stars •  Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars 01/12/23 Full Review Read all reviews

Mills of the Gods

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