While this film has a fine reputation, I was very disappointed after watching it recently on DVD. The director, William Wellman, made one of the best of the 30's screwball comedies - "Nothing Sacred." But the scriptwriter/producer Nunnally Johnson had no background in comedy based on his credits. Perhaps that was part of the problem, since "Roxie Hart" is never as funny as it wants to be.
Being a big fan of fast-paced Hollywood comedies of the 30's and 40's, I was looking forward to seeing this. But so many elements seemed off. For one thing, there are scenes that just go flat despite the fast pace of the line delivery, particularly in the beginning.
Ginger Rogers' overacting as Roxie is a constant irritant. Having just won her Oscar for "Kitty Foyle," she's very self-conscious here. Iris Adrian, who plays a murderess who briefly steals Roxie's limelight with the press, is completely inside her character and far more effective in just a few brief scenes than Rogers is in the whole film.
Rogers' contract must have stipulated that she dance in the film, so we're treated to two dance sequences, the first of which starts well but becomes ridiculous when the whole press corps jumps in, and the second of which is just irrelevant.
Adolphe Menjou plays the blustery lawyer Billy Flynn, but he did this performance with better effect as Walter Burns in the original film of "The Front Page." George Montgomery is decent. The funniest performance is from character actor Lynne Overman doing his best Lee Tracy impersonation as the most cynical of the newspapermen.
I'm not familiar with the original play "Chicago," so don't know how faithful this film is to it compared to the Broadway musical (which I liked a lot) or its screen version (which I liked only in parts). But while "Roxie Hart" gets somewhat better once it reaches the trial portion of the plot, it never reaches the dizzying comic heights to which it aspires.
