(1932)
2
Bruce Eder
Based on a novel by Harvey Fergusson, Hot Saturday is ostensibly a comedy -- and there are some funny moments in it, to be sure, mostly provided by Cary Grant, playing a small-town ne'er-do-well, Grady Sutton as a co-worker of the heroine, and William Collier, Sr. as her father. But it's just as much a morality tale and a piercing look at small-town hypocrisy. Director William Seiter's forte was comedy, but he handles this somewhat more serious material well enough, with a lot of help from a trio of talented leads: Cary Grant essays the role of a devil-may-care lothario -- who turns out to be a lot more serious about life than he thought -- beautifully; and Nancy Carroll strikes a good balance between seriousness and flirtatiousness, given the restrictions of the era in dialogue and action; Randolph Scott doesn't have quite enough screen time to establish his character, but what he does get out on screen is sufficient for the production at hand, which seems a little bit rushed as it is. The action in Hot Saturday takes place in about one week, and in the course of that week a good part of the social fabric of the small town in which it is set will be torn apart, and its weakest links exposed -- it all happens too fast by the standards of modern viewing, but in 1932 it probably seemed proportioned just about right, and there is enough to enjoy eight decades later - especially in the glib-tongued performance of the young Grant -- to make it worthwhile viewing, at least as a period piece about early 1930s morality. The denouement also contains a fascinating (for the early 1930s, when Americans still didn't live in cities), off-handed rejection of small-town virtues and morality, as the two leads blithely head for New York City, and a cheerful resolution of their problems with the blessings of big-city clergy. The movie was adapted from a 1926 novel of the same name by Harvey Fergusson, a major author of the early/middle twentieth century, and if not brought to the screen on the level of, say, Sinclair Lewis's Babbitt or Elmer Gantry, it's still worth a look.
Hot Saturday on AllMovie
Hot Saturday (1932)
