DANCE, FOOLS, DANCE (1931) ** It's fun to see what legends were like earlier in their career. At age 27 Joan Crawford is a good girl (though not above seducing powerful men in the line of work, do I hear "typecast?"), pretty, smart and reasonably pure. She already emotes the full range of emotions effortlessly and at effective and disturbing levels, but has difficulty with more than a few of her lines. In fact she reminds me more of Brigitte Helm in Metropolis than herself in any other role. Clark Gable formed more quickly, impressive as a gangster even without his mustache. He doesn't quite snap the good lines like he would, but there was a lot of whiskey between here and there. The other actors aren't as good, the plot's only fairly awful until they glue the obvious and requisite ending where we all knew it was going to be, Joan's eyes and eyebrows are definitely the best part but that in itself is no shame to anything else.
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