A Movie Review: Hot Saturday

Hot Saturday. Per Wikipedia, this was Cary Grant's first leading role in a movie. I'm not going to say that this is a brilliant movie, but you do get to appreciate the early career of Cary Grant and the early signs of his signature style. 

Ruth Brock (Nancy Carroll) works as a bank clerk in the small town of Marysville. A number of young men seek her attention. This includes a wealthy playboy by the name of Romer Sheffield (Cary Grant). For a Saturday night out with the youthful crew of the town, she accepts an invitation by Conny Billup (Edwar Woods) who also works at the bank. Later, Romer Sheffield invites everyone out to his place for the day -- an obvious attempt to talk to Ruth. In fact, he spends most of the day with her. Later, the young crowd heads off to a dance hall. Romer stays behind. The dance hall happens to be by a lake. Conny and Ruth go out on a boat ride. During the boat ride, if this movie was made more current, Conny basically attempts to rape Ruth. He then leaves her stranded far from the dance hall. Ruth ends up walking back to Romer's house. Out of revenge, Conny tells this conservative town that Ruth spent the night with Romer. The gossip spreads and Ruth is fired from her job. It does have a happy ending with Ruth and Romer getting engaged.

This movie is played light, but this is actually a serious topic. There is a near rape (as close to one as probably could be filmed in the early 1930s) and then a vicious rumor is spread about that girl. It almost feels like a dichotomy of a film: serious topic played for laughs.

For me, I actually found myself paying attention to Lilian Bond's character, Eva Randolph. She's sort of Ruth's rival in terms of attracting the boys and her father is the town banker. It feels like the movie gets so much more interesting when Lilian's character is on screen.