I happened to catch this movie on TV one day when I was in junior high, and it made a lasting impression on me. My parents had told me about their childhoods during the Great Depression of the 1930s; Dad in particular was haunted by the memory of those days, when his upper middle-class family experienced a sudden, frightening plunge in their standard of living. I also read about the era, but in a curious way it was this film that helped me understand the human impact of that painful period with special vividness. Three Cornered Moon starts out like a comedy, a screwball comedy about a rich, wacky family, but then the Depression hits and reality smacks them all in the face. The tone changes, the plot shifts gears, and we find we're watching a drama about a group of chastened people who learn to deal with adversity and grow up in the process.
The story concerns the Rimplegars of Brooklyn. Right off the bat the family name suggests comic eccentricity, and after a humorous intro of the characters we're primed to laugh. This mood continues through the first scene, when dizzy matriarch Nellie (Mary Boland) is revealed in the kitchen, wearing a ridiculous feathered gown as she attempts without much success to communicate with the family's Polish cook. Nellie is a widow with three adult sons and a daughter. The family lives in a mansion and they appear to be wealthy, but when the laundryman shows up demanding $11.47 from the lady of the house it seems to be something of a problem finding the money to pay him. Nellie refers vaguely to the Depression ("I hear it's still going on") as she stalls for time, but ultimately she's able to pay most of the tab.
The various family members are good-hearted but rather silly. One son is involved in community theater and takes himself very seriously, while another is a hard-partying college boy. Daughter Elizabeth (Claudette Colbert) is involved with a pompous novelist, and is given to histrionic speeches about the meaninglessness of life. As soon as the character relationships have been established, however, disaster strikes. The younger Rimplegars are horrified to learn that Nellie has invested all the family's money in a fraudulent metal mine called Three Cornered Moon (a strange and perfectly chosen name) and that their savings been completely wiped out. And this is where things get interesting. The children, privileged all their lives, must face reality and scramble for jobs, just like everyone else. They do so with admirable grit and grace, and we find that they're made of stronger stuff than we may have assumed. Naturally, the comic elements of the story fade as the serious theme kicks in. The turning point comes when daughter Elizabeth sets out to look for work, and this passage is marked with an impressive montage of contemporary news footage of the unemployed, shots of weary feet pounding the pavement, close-ups of job listings, and audio clips of exhausted job-seekers: "I spent my last nickel on the subway," etc. It's a sobering sequence that beautifully captures the grim mood of the era.
Eventually, and because this is still essentially a comedy, the Rimplegars manage to overcome their problems and eject the moochers who exploited the family in flush times, thanks in part to the intervention of a handsome young doctor (Richard Arlen) who is sweet on Elizabeth. It's easy to see why he's drawn to her: Claudette Colbert is at the peak of her beauty here. She gives a finely nuanced performance, and we watch as her Elizabeth matures from an affected, overgrown adolescent to a sadder but wiser young woman. Colbert begins in a low key but builds in intensity, and when at one point she mistakenly believes her brother has died her hysteria is disturbingly credible.
The distinguished critic Leslie Halliwell classified this film as a "slightly screwball" romantic comedy, which I believe is an apt description, and he opined that its humor had faded with time. That also feels like an accurate assessment, but to my way of thinking the comedy in this story is secondary to the drama, whatever the filmmakers' intentions might have been. In seeing Three Cornered Moon again after so many years I can easily understand why it made such an impression on me as a kid. The upbeat ending comes as a blessed relief, but it's hard to shake the traumatic echoes of the story's darkest moments. Silly or not, the Rimplegars are sympathetic figures. Like so many other people of their time they found themselves faced with a genuine crisis that tested their mettle. My parents and grandparents were in a comparable situation. The financial meltdown of 2009 hasn't reached the nadir of the early 1930s, but similar fears are in the air, and seen today this movie packs a quiet but well delivered punch.
The story concerns the Rimplegars of Brooklyn. Right off the bat the family name suggests comic eccentricity, and after a humorous intro of the characters we're primed to laugh. This mood continues through the first scene, when dizzy matriarch Nellie (Mary Boland) is revealed in the kitchen, wearing a ridiculous feathered gown as she attempts without much success to communicate with the family's Polish cook. Nellie is a widow with three adult sons and a daughter. The family lives in a mansion and they appear to be wealthy, but when the laundryman shows up demanding $11.47 from the lady of the house it seems to be something of a problem finding the money to pay him. Nellie refers vaguely to the Depression ("I hear it's still going on") as she stalls for time, but ultimately she's able to pay most of the tab.
The various family members are good-hearted but rather silly. One son is involved in community theater and takes himself very seriously, while another is a hard-partying college boy. Daughter Elizabeth (Claudette Colbert) is involved with a pompous novelist, and is given to histrionic speeches about the meaninglessness of life. As soon as the character relationships have been established, however, disaster strikes. The younger Rimplegars are horrified to learn that Nellie has invested all the family's money in a fraudulent metal mine called Three Cornered Moon (a strange and perfectly chosen name) and that their savings been completely wiped out. And this is where things get interesting. The children, privileged all their lives, must face reality and scramble for jobs, just like everyone else. They do so with admirable grit and grace, and we find that they're made of stronger stuff than we may have assumed. Naturally, the comic elements of the story fade as the serious theme kicks in. The turning point comes when daughter Elizabeth sets out to look for work, and this passage is marked with an impressive montage of contemporary news footage of the unemployed, shots of weary feet pounding the pavement, close-ups of job listings, and audio clips of exhausted job-seekers: "I spent my last nickel on the subway," etc. It's a sobering sequence that beautifully captures the grim mood of the era.
Eventually, and because this is still essentially a comedy, the Rimplegars manage to overcome their problems and eject the moochers who exploited the family in flush times, thanks in part to the intervention of a handsome young doctor (Richard Arlen) who is sweet on Elizabeth. It's easy to see why he's drawn to her: Claudette Colbert is at the peak of her beauty here. She gives a finely nuanced performance, and we watch as her Elizabeth matures from an affected, overgrown adolescent to a sadder but wiser young woman. Colbert begins in a low key but builds in intensity, and when at one point she mistakenly believes her brother has died her hysteria is disturbingly credible.
The distinguished critic Leslie Halliwell classified this film as a "slightly screwball" romantic comedy, which I believe is an apt description, and he opined that its humor had faded with time. That also feels like an accurate assessment, but to my way of thinking the comedy in this story is secondary to the drama, whatever the filmmakers' intentions might have been. In seeing Three Cornered Moon again after so many years I can easily understand why it made such an impression on me as a kid. The upbeat ending comes as a blessed relief, but it's hard to shake the traumatic echoes of the story's darkest moments. Silly or not, the Rimplegars are sympathetic figures. Like so many other people of their time they found themselves faced with a genuine crisis that tested their mettle. My parents and grandparents were in a comparable situation. The financial meltdown of 2009 hasn't reached the nadir of the early 1930s, but similar fears are in the air, and seen today this movie packs a quiet but well delivered punch.
