Behind Office Doors
by Melville W. Brown
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Actor: Catherine Dale Owen, Kitty Kelly, Mary Astor, Ricardo Cortez, Robert AmesDirector: Melville W. Brown
Cinematographer: J. Roy Hunt
Editor: Archie Marshek
Producer: Henry Hobart
Producer: William LeBaron
Writer: Alan Schultz
Writer: Carey Wilson
Writer: J. Walter Ruben
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language)
Format: Black & White, Closed-captioned, Dolby, DVD, NTSC
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 82 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2004-07-27
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: Alpha Video
DVD Reviews of Behind Office Doors
DVD Review: Behind Office Doors
Summary: 4 Stars
An unidentified woman hears a woman scream behind a locked apartment door. She knocks on the door and we in the audience, along with Mary Linden (Mary Astor), discover that behind the door they're playing Blind Man's Bluff and the man in the blindfold picks her. Pulling off the blindfold Ronnie Wales (Ricardo Cortez) demands "payment." Pre-code payment, of course, is a kiss. Mary, playfully objecting, tells him "It's the woman who pays and pays and pays!" Thus does BEHIND OFFICE DOORS, a smart romantic tale, present its major theme, that of the underappreciated woman.
BEHIND OFFICE DOORS is an old movie. Ancient cameras and microphones limit and anchor movement and make for static scenes. The actors walk into camera range, chasing the camera rather than being chased. Title cards pop up here and there to explain things (Three months later...) In one scene Astor can stretch back on a bed and ask Cortez if he's going to "spurn her too," but both of her feet remain on the floor. A "modern woman" achieves success by coaching and mentoring and maneuvering the man she secretly loves into a position of power and prestige.
And yet I was totally captivated by this movie. Astor won me over with her intelligent portrayal of the hyper-efficient girl friday. Cortez is an interesting case, as well. In this movie he played a philanderer, an adulterer, a gigolo. Seeing as how he was molded by the studios as the heir apparent for the late Valentino, the PR people selling him as the new bedroom eyed Latin lover, his character is subtly cast. Instead of the lecherous wolf he could easily have been, Ronnie Wales is sympathetic and quite likeable. He is the tempting devil with the gentle soul.
The other man in Astor's life is played by Robert Ames. His James Duneen begins as a brash, loud, and fairly obnoxious sales manager. Under Astor's sure tutelage he promoted promptly and, probably, a few steps above his head. Ames died in 1932 at the age of 43, and I doubt anyone but the most loyal of old movies fan have even heard of him. Ames' Duneen is another character that in less sure hands would have remained two-dimensional, but under Melville Brown's sure direction the Duneen character evolves more than any. By the end of things he is very much the sober executive.
At the end of one dance filled, liquor washed evening Duneen sees Mary "as she really is." Not the "perfect machine in the office," but... well, if this had occurred at the end of the movie, rather than at the end of scene two, we'd be talking about a totally different movie. Any further plot exposition would be a spoiler.
Movies don't normally age well. Photography and sound recording styles harden about the arteries, they lose the cutting edge beauty of their youth as they mature into a quaint middle age and then into primitive dotage. Vibrant story lines gray to implausibility - we laugh when we should weep. Modern acting styles that speak to their generation become senile mimes. The reason we don't watch old movies is because they ARE old, and in the way, and no longer speak to us.
That said, BEHIND OFFICE DOORS retains a good deal of its supple youthfulness. We may no longer buy a story about a woman finding fulfillment through a man, but stories of those who sacrifice for love (requited and otherwise) will always have currency. And the acting is uniformly good and natural.
A bit of trivia - Born in a Jewish ghetto in Vienna, Jacob Krantz was transformed by Hollywood into the Spanish romantic hero Ricardo Cortez and marketed as the new Valentino. Cortez was a serious actor, though, and demanded roles that took him beyond the bedroom. Mary Astor is probably best remembered as Brigid O'Shaughnessy, the dame that Humphrey Bogart's Sam Spade wouldn't take a fall for in John Huston's THE MALTESE FALCON.
In 1931, the same year BEHIND OFFICE DOORS appeared, Cortez starred as Sam Spade in the little remembered DANGEROUS FEMALE. It was the first appearance of Dahiell Hammett's detective in a movie. It's alternate title? THE MALTESE FALCON.
And now you know the rest of the story.
More Behind Office Doors reviews:
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