This film is very entertaining, very witty, and has amazingly quick dialogue like a speech battle in a way. However, it is also extremely sexist. You have William Powell from Thin Man, another great role, playing his subtle yet dominant male character, a trope that seemed to emerge in the 30’s as the glitz and glamour of Hollywood compounded with the celebrity and star persona accompanying sound to produce a “modern” luxury gentlemen a la Clark Cable in It Happened One Night rather than the old down on his luck blue collar Big man. William Powell would have gotten his ass kicked by the male protagonists of the 1910’s and 1920’s, even the gangsters of the early 30’s.
This is film a super poignant and cutting story about the Great Depression and the disparity between the haves and have-nots. It's very bold and very captivating too in terms of the emotions it strikes at. The films in the mid-1930’s seemed to have graduated in emotion to a more subtle and complex look into the soul of mankind. The scenes strike a lot more precisely at the viewer’s emotional core.
Still, the filmmakers of the day are really trying to connect with the low class viewer, not the rich. It’s clearly made for poor people to laugh at the rich, not the other way around, given that it's interesting to note the revelation of socialist tendency and Jewish minority in the fiml.
There's oddly not much printed about this film. It’s extremely interesting that the main point of the movie is to assert the role of work and duty in keeping one’s life thriving. You look at the men at the dump, they excel as butlers for the Nightclub. It's as if all they needed was a job and Godfrey learned that lesson through his experience of going from everything to nothing and back to everything through work. This film is almost a poster for the merits of a free market and an economy that has job openings for it's population to enter.
6:43, big fat actor guy, he’s been in a bunch, but he’s the countwerweight to the lighter “modern man” taking the attitudes of the past in direct reflection of this sort of protagonist, he’s pushed to the side, still helpful, but not in anybody’s view.
39:42 “Where did your ancestors come over from Godfrey?” “As far as I know they’ve always been here.” “They’re not Indians I hope!” That's a pretty damn racist response showing the times.
48:35, “Don’t you know women cry at their engagements and other peoples weddings...I don’t know why but they just do.” That's also a super sexist and revealing remark of the day.