Dinner at Eight (1933)

Dinner at Eight (1933)

Directed by George Cukor

Screenplay by Frances Marion and Herman J. Mankiewicz, based on the stage play by George S. Kaufman and Edna Furber

Runtime: 1 hr, 51 min

Perhaps my favorite sort of scene is the dinner conversation.  Take a group people, each person with their own baggage, and leave them to their own devices over a meal of variable quality.  They could respond with silence, with mirth, or with overheated discussions of politics and religion.  Perhaps, such as in My Dinner with Andre, the conversation might even hammer at some universal truths.  But here’s a little twist—what gets a person to whatever state of mind he’s at once that dinner comes?

I wouldn’t say that Dinner at Eight is about that topic, but it uses that idea as a backdrop.  This dinner is being hosted by Millicent Jordan (Billie Burke), a New York socialite whose husband Oliver (Lionel Barrymore) runs a prestigious but struggling shipping line.  The party is being thrown for a British couple named the Ferncliffes, but we never see the guests of honor.  Instead, we follow the invited dinner guests going about the day of the dinner: making preparations, engaging with adultery, having suicidal thoughts, etc.  Oh, did I mention this was a comedy?

There are several character-driven subplots in Dinner at Eight, many of which intersect and all of which are interesting.  Some of the plots are purely comedic.  Marie Dressler, who plays the consciously aging stage actress Carlotta Vance, is the ultimately scene-stealer, hammy in the best way possible.  Whether she’s trying to pass her little dog off on other party guests or to sell her stock in Oliver’s company, ever word out of her mouth is pronounced flamboyantly, as if Carlotta never actually left the stage.

If the aging actress represents the comedic subplots, then the aging actor represents the tragic.  Larry Renault (John Barrymore) is the washed-up veteran who doesn’t (or won’t) realize it.  His agent is unable to get producers to even consider casting him, and he has a quite pronounced drinking problem.  On top of that, all of his scenes are shot in a single hotel suite, which not only isolates him from the outside world, but is indicative of his interior world.  Given all this, J. Barrymore gives an excellent performance—perhaps because, as granddaughter Drew has noted, he essentially plays himself.

That these two subplots occupy the same script yet do not feel inappropriate together is a testament to the screenplay from Frances Marion and Herman J. Mankiewicz (a.k.a. the co-writer of Citizen Kane).  Furthermore, their writing manages to convey a slew of socio-political relations in a two hour movie.  Firmly aware of the Great Depression, Dinner at Eight explores the fall of the wealthy, both the aristocracy and the Jazz Age nouveau riche, and their still tense relationship with the working classes.  It invites both sympathy for their declining fortunes and ridicule of their out-of-date manners.

Of course, some characters are easier to sympathize with than others.  Oliver is a generally kind and scrupulous businessman, so not only does the audience sympathize with his failing business, but it further draws us into his failing health.  His wife, on the other hand, is so concerned with the centerpiece for the dinner and whatnot that she comes off as beyond out of touch.  And then there are ambiguous characters such as Kitty Packard (Jean Harlow).  She may be ungrateful to the maid and she’s an adulteress, but she doesn’t take her husband Dan’s (Wallace Beery) crap lying down—well, figuratively, at least.

And, well, I haven’t even gotten to how all these people end up intersecting.  In a way the interconnectivity itself is hilarious.  Among the dinner guests, there are two separate love triangles, one including the daughter of the Jordans.  There are the machinations to buy out the Jordan shipping line and for one of the characters to end up in the President’s cabinet.  And worst of all, there’s the fact that Millicent Jordan has to keep finding replacement guests for the dinner party.  Oh, the horror!

Okay, I jest.  But this rotating guest list only adds to the tensions.  What the hell is going to happen once eight o’clock comes?  There are so many lit fuses near gunpowder that one half expects the Jordan estate to explode the moment that dinner is served.  In fact, the build-up is so developed and emphasized that, well, any resolution to it would be a disappointment.  I will say that the as time runs out on the movie, it takes a definite turn from the heavy to the light material.  I’m not sure this was for the best, but it is gradual enough to not be offensive.

Now that I think on it, I suppose the best analogue for the feel of Dinner at Eight would be The Apartment: at times it is soul-crushingly depressing, but ultimately a story dominated by levity.  This is not to say that Dinner at Eight is a trifle; rather, it suggests that the film attempts to embody the dualities and rapidly shifting tones of everyday life.  Showing the guests as despicable and gold-hearted, sinful and virtuous, adulterous and also adulterous, the movie makes a good case for the notion that company is more important to the meal than the food.