A terrible, lavish, early talkie from Cecil B. DeMille, that I couldn't make heads or tails of until I saw his 1925 melodrama The Golden Bed. Madame Satan in reality was DeMille's last foray into domestic comedy-drama among the very rich, a theme he had been doing pretty consistently since 1918. Film buffs tend to overlook that genrespeaking for myself, it all seems too gauche and mediocre to take time evaluatingand look at the big epics. But there they are: gobs of money made titillating naïve Jazz Age audiences with supposed glimpses into the foibles and follies of spoiled wives, their mogul husbands, frivolous friends and treacherous roué-hangers-on. There is the fixation on overbuilt, ludicrous, luxury bathrooms and wild parties. Very hard to swallow for a contemporary viewer; this throwing onto the screen of high-living and consumer greed, redeemed by unctuous moralistic retribution, was a creature strictly of 1920s America.
Madame Satan was DeMille's attempt to extend this theme into the talkie period, but the extreme artificiality of this type of film only became intensified with the addition of sound. Normally I would say, as others have, to sit through the build-up, such as described above, to the thrilling disaster movie climax aboard the stricken party dirigible. But don't. If you can see the climax in a compilation film or fast forward to it at home, okay, but do not bother with any other part of Madame Satan at all. The talents of Denny, Johnson and Young, and the great MGM sets notwithstanding: it's just not worth it. You won't be able to get away from the silly, plodding, unfunny thud the first part of this movie makes as it shuffles through your mind.
Madame Satan was DeMille's attempt to extend this theme into the talkie period, but the extreme artificiality of this type of film only became intensified with the addition of sound. Normally I would say, as others have, to sit through the build-up, such as described above, to the thrilling disaster movie climax aboard the stricken party dirigible. But don't. If you can see the climax in a compilation film or fast forward to it at home, okay, but do not bother with any other part of Madame Satan at all. The talents of Denny, Johnson and Young, and the great MGM sets notwithstanding: it's just not worth it. You won't be able to get away from the silly, plodding, unfunny thud the first part of this movie makes as it shuffles through your mind.