When I think of comedy films from the 1930's,I tend to think of mile-a-minute Marx Brothers or Laurel and Hardy like romps.That's not what you get with Dinner at Eight.This was surprising,due to the fact that film placed 85th on the AFI's 100 Years,100 Laughs list some years ago.I'm not saying it is a poor film.Anything but.It's extremely well acted,well presented,and it does have it's humorous moments,but there are some depressing elements to the film as well that make me question why anyone would call it a comedy,let alone why it would make such a list.In the end,I would recommend it,but don't go in expecting a rip roaring slapstick film.You'll only be disappointed in that regard.

If like me, you're more familiar with the early 30s Warner Brothers movies when Daryl Zanuck was at the helm which focussed on how the poor struggled with - and usually overcame the deprivations of the Great Depression, Dinner at Eight will take you a while to get used to. You might think it's not for you but you should stick with it - it's worth it.

Rather than finding Joan Blondell doing anything she can to avoid starvation or James Cagney turning to crime to feed his family, this film is about how the rich ultra-privileged cope with the economic disaster. Whilst their situations are not life or death choices, they're just as devastating for them - or they think they are.

When compared with what was happening to millions of working and ex-working people, the awful tragedy of Billie Burke not having an aspic lion ready for the dinner's centre piece may sound absolutely trivial - which of course it is - but this film shows how such pointless trivia is ruining her life. It's very clever.

It is a clever film (based on a clever play) but perhaps not that easy for us in the 21st century to engage with. Despite some descriptions it's not a comedy, it's not easy viewing and after the first half hour it would be easy to switch off thinking that it's over-hyped and boring but don't - keep with it. It's one of those films that sticks around in your head days afterwards because it's actually very good. Considering the talent and expense that went into making this that's not surprising. MGM pulled out all the stops with this and it really shows. Surprisingly even Jean Harlow shows that she can actually act!

Essentially it's theme is 'rich people are suffering too.' It focusses on a small group of 'privileged people' preparing for a big society dinner party but nobody is whom they seem. Some are living in a fantasy world they've invented and can't survive outside of it. Some have clawed their way up from the gutter to the top of the ladder only to find out that they're now teetering on the edge of a fragile precipice but to keep their social position, to maintain the facade which they need they must keep going even though they know their only option is to plummet down the ground. It's about a false world of vulnerable unhappy people figuring out (or indeed giving up on) how to cope with their futures. That sounds a miserable premise for a film and indeed it's not the most cheerful of movies but the witty script and professional direction make all these characters very real, multi-dimensional and personable. Of particular praise is John Barrymore playing a former superstar actor now virtually a destitute and penniless has-been, slowly killing himself with cheap whiskey. Because this role is essentially his own life by 1933, his performance is poignantly tragic and very moving.

Talk about an all-star lineup. I'm referring to the WRITERS of *Dinner at Eight*. Get a load of this list: George S. Kaufman and Edna Ferber, who wrote the original stage play; Francis Marion and Herman J. Mankiewicz, who wrote the screenplay; and Donald Ogden Stewart applying garnish (and varnish). These names are even more impressive than the cast-list: Brothers Barrymore, Jean Harlow, Billie Burke, Wallace Beery, et al. All under the direction of George Cukor in a film produced by David O. Selznick for MGM, which at the time (1933), was run by Irving G. Thalberg. "Old Hollywood" enough for you?

Of course, you'll have to make allowances for the primitive mise-en-scene -- after all, talkies had been around for only a few years when this movie was made. The new innovation of sound was considered a more than fair compensation for the loss of the visual pyrotechnics introduced by the great silent directors like Griffith. Therefore, movies from this particular era look boxed in, stuffed with talk, talk, and more talk. Luckily in this instance, the talk is generally interesting, almost always witty, and attuned to the idiosyncrasies of the various characters. Finally, the whole piece is shot through with that certain world-weariness that comes from creative artists attempting to assess, and say goodbye to, the end of an epoch. Let me expand a bit on that. Consider three of the characters: first, there's Marie Dressler's former stage actress, a sort of grande dame Sarah Bernhardt type, now old and corpulent, keeping a merciless eye on her finances, wistfully recounting the glories of the long-past era of Delmonico's and horse-drawn carriages on The Broad Way. There's her long-time friend (and former beau), Lionel Barrymore, a sclerotic magnate of a shipping empire. His heart and his business have both seen better days. And finally there's John Barrymore (the Barrymores don't play brothers in the movie; in fact, they never share a moment of screen time), a washed-up, has-been, 47-year-old movie star of the silent era, living in a posh hotel room he can't afford, haunted by the memory of fame and three ex-wives, pestered by a 19-year-old girlfriend who won't allow him to drink himself to death. These characters are the most obvious symbols of an era that has passed . . . but even Billie Burke's nervous socialite, with her humorously single-minded pursuit of the perfect dinner party, represents a melancholy reflection of What Used to Be. When her husband Lionel confesses to her that his shipping business is going broke in the new age of airplanes, we know that dinner parties will be the least of her worries in the near future. There's a Depression on, you know. And modernity -- the current, heartless variety -- is hot on everyone's heels.

The movie sets these relics against the crass New Breed, typified by the most unlikely husband-and-wife team in the history of movies: Jean Harlow and Wallace Beery. While Beery goes about the business of destroying Lionel's business, Harlow lolls around in bed wearing fur-trimmed gowns, noshing chocolates. Even their maid is a disrespectful blackmailer, demanding from Harlow "hush-jewelry" to keep from mentioning Harlow's adulteries to her husband. But somewhere between having an affair with her doctor and clawing her way into "respectable" society, Harlow manages to find her own core of decency: she keeps that pig of a husband on the (relatively) up-and-up. The movie's writers don't ENTIRELY give up on the new generation. Harlow is even reading a book -- a NUTTY kind of a book, but it's a positive sign nevertheless.

Dressler's double-take after hearing Harlow confess to reading a book is, of course, world-famous. Everyone remembers Dressler's punch-line, too. But too few pause to think of what Harlow describes her book to be about: a society in which machines do all of the work for us, a society in which machines will virtually replace us. And thus this brings us back to theme of the passing genteel age and the coming new age, with its attendant ugliness parading under the banner of "progress". Yes, Harlow will never be replaced, as Dressler points out. But who among us is Jean Harlow?

*Dinner at Eight* is probably the snappiest dirge, the wittiest elegy, ever produced by Hollywood. It was made in an era when actual artists worked in that L.A. suburb -- unlike the automatons running the show today. As such, it's prophetic about the art-form to which it belongs, as well. 9 stars out 10.