All of Me (1934)

User Rating:

6.5/10   

Director:

James Flood

Writers:

Sidney Buchman (writer)
Thomas Mitchell (writer)

Release Date:

1 February 1934 (USA)

Genre:

Drama

Tagline:

There are two kinds of women, but only one kind of love!

Plot:

A professor tires of the direction his life is going and wants to move west, but his girlfriend doesn't understand why he is so dissatisfied. |

Plot Keywords:

Beautiful Woman | Based On Play

Cast

Fredric March	...	Don Ellis
Miriam Hopkins	...	Lydia Darrow
George Raft	...	Honey Rogers
Helen Mack	...	Eve Haron
Nella Walker	...	Mrs. Darrow
William Collier Sr.	...	Jerry Helman
Gilbert Emery	...	Dean
Blanche Friderici	...	Miss Haskell
Kitty Kelly	...	Lorraine
Guy Usher	...	District Attorney
John Marston	...	Nat Davis
Edgar Kennedy	...	Guard
Jill Dennett	...	Molly
Laura La Marr	...	Lil
Astrid Allwyn	...	Ray

Runtime:

70 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Company:

Paramount Pictures

Trivia:

One of over 700 Paramount Productions, filmed between 1929 and 1949, which were sold to MCA/Universal in 1958 for television distribution, and have been owned and controlled by Universal ever since.

Quotes:

Eve Haron: Draw up a chair and have a think.

Movie Connections:

Referenced in Thou Shalt Not: Sex, Sin and Censorship in Pre-Code Hollywood (2008) (TV)

Minor film with unfinished quality

"All of Me" is not a highlight in the career of any of the principal players. It is slow to get to any point, and after the climax it slithers off weakly into nothing.

That said, none of the actors is bad here, and all have flashes of something quite special. James Flood's direction is so stilted it drags the sometimes interesting dialogue down with it. And none of the performances can quite rise above that. The plot is absurd while it tries to be important. The script plays coy with the obvious element of out-of-wedlock pregnancies not to mention premarital sex. The end scene, if you can call it that, is the limpest point of the film.

Fredric March is reteamed with Miriam Hopkins for the first time since they were so great in "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde." The combination is not nearly as interesting here. They are lovers (he a professor and she a student, for added raciness) who have intellectual differences about love and marriage. Only when they cross paths with George Raft and Helen Mack do they begin to discover that love is more about heart and soul than about a thought process. Raft and Mack are lovers trying to overcome a criminal lifestyle that has left them at the mercy of the System.

March underplays his role with aplomb and disappears for a long stretch while Hopkins (for good reason) seems to struggle to find motivation in her confused character. Their situation gets tiring and is set aside all together as the Raft-Mack subplot takes over. This is fortunate as it is much more interesting. Unexpectedly, after slogging through the storyline, Raft is quite compelling in the climax. Mack is direct and on-point throughout.

March and Raft were both stars for Paramount, and the studio would have had trouble finding two more different men with such different styles. That could have been interesting, but alas, they have only one scene together.