Played by an incandescent Sylvia Sidney, Joan Prentice is a naive young heiress who finds herself instantly smitten with our shitfaced star. She\u2019s at a high society party where she\u2019d hoped to rub elbows with the city\u2019s cultured intelligentsia, only to discover that they\u2019re all too drunk to carry on a conversation. (Prohibition was still the law of the land. You can tell because almost everyone in the movie is an alcoholic.) Out on the balcony for air, Joan meets March\u2019s courtly, blotto Jerry \u2013 a would-be man of letters who can\u2019t stop slurring about how \u201cswell\u201d he thinks she is. The film takes its title from a toast Jerry offers every time he raises yet another glass, acknowledging his inevitable damnation, but happily so. Somehow, she\u2019s charmed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We are too, in spite of ourselves. Jerry\u2019s a charming guy. He can be pretty sloppy but when he gets it together, he\u2019s together enough that you can understand why the right woman would think she can fix him. Joan certainly seems like the right woman. Sidney glows with girlish infatuation, covering for his constant screwups under the weary eye of her unimpressed, millionaire father (George Irving) who has seen far too many guys like Jerry in his time. But every attempt to split them up only brings the couple closer together. We\u2019re also rooting for these two kids to make it work, even when Jerry\u2019s too drunk to attend their engagement party, or when he loses the wedding ring before the ceremony and has to substitute a corkscrew.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Success has a way of exacerbating such things, which is what happens when a play our new husband penned becomes the toast of Broadway. The cast is headed by his ex-girlfriend (Adrianne Allen), Jerry\u2019s other Achilles\u2019 Heel and perhaps even more poisonous than alcohol. (His best friend sizes her up by saying, \u201cWhat this country needs is fewer blondes.\u201d) Claire didn\u2019t think much of Jerry back when he was a broke reporter, but now that he\u2019s the talk of the town she can\u2019t seem to keep her hands off him. Joan has little patience for all these messy parties and infidelities, but what\u2019s a girl to do? She declares that they\u2019re a modern couple who make their own rules, telling Jerry she\u2019d \u201crather go merrily to Hell with you than alone.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Meanwhile, Jerry may seem like he\u2019s living a male fantasy \u2013 staying married to the woman you love while sleeping with the ex you never got over \u2013 but watch his reaction when his wife walks in with Cary Grant on her arm. (In only his third credited screen appearance, it takes a single scene for the ninth-billed, future Hollywood legend to become a formidable foil.) Jerry\u2019s more of a helpless, pathetic drunk than a mean or violent one, but there\u2019s still a strong sense of March doing a riff on his performance in the previous year\u2019s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde<\/em>. This time, however, the story is scarier and sadder because it\u2019s closer to real life. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Released two years before Hollywood\u2019s self-imposed censorship guidelines would render this story unfilmable for the next few decades, Merrily We Go to Hell<\/em> has a bracingly grown-up sophistication that\u2019s still missing from most movies made 90 years later. One need only look around at the infantilization of our current culture to wonder how things might have worked out had the censors never gotten their way. Would this be a healthier world if subjects like sex and substance abuse were allowed to be addressed openly in entertainment for adults? Or were they right that the movies would have merrily gone to hell?<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Merrily We Go to Hell” is now streaming on the Criterion Collection<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/merrily1-scaled-1024x667.jpeg\")
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It’s heartbreaking to watch the forced conviviality with which both parties play along with the arrangement \u2013 especially Sidney\u2019s Joan, feigning a chic amorality that\u2019s obviously eating her up inside. She\u2019s especially unconvincing when citing her recipe for a successful modern marriage: \u201cSingle lives, twin beds and triple bromides in the morning.\u201d She might be able to fool these stumbling partygoers, but Arzner\u2019s camera lingers long enough on Sidney\u2019s sad eyes for us to see right through her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n