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16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Employees' Entrance: Survival of the Meanest, May 28, 2003
This review is from: Employees' Entrance (Forbidden Hollywood) [VHS] (VHS Tape)
For those Americans who are too young or too uneducated to know the history of this country during the Depression, a film like EMPLOYEES' ENTRANCE is a rude awakening. Times were hard then and Hollywood had to walk a fine line between entertaining an audience that was only too familiar with the horrors of a crumbling economy and not reminding them in such a way that would cause them to stay out of the movie theater. What director Roy Del Ruth accomplished was to maintain this delicate balance by making vicious store manager Kurt Anderson (Warren William) the dramatic center. Anderson is a despicable sort. He is very much what you would expect to emerge at the top of the food chain from a Darwinian pool of store managers. He uses people as if they were disposable tissue. He is tight with a budget, nor is he above taking advantage of a woman too drunk to resist. Yet despite these character flaws, he dominates each scene with a never say die attitude that slowly elevates him into something perilously close to warped admiration. Warren William as a pre-fifties version of George Sanders is exactly right as the cad who nevertheless engages the audience's total attention. Loretta Young is Madeline, the secretly married woman who is drunkenly seduced. Young is the ostensible female lead but it is hard for her to show the bounce that we know she would later exude since Warren William's dastardliness so thoroughly dominates each scene. The relatively unknown Alice White as Polly provides a surprisingly successful counterpoint to William with her own peroxide blond brashness as she recognizes that his arrogance is a lethal mixture of charm and cold menace. Imagine a non-hunchbacked Brooks Brother Richard III proudly and openly boasting of his future villanies and you get an idea of how attractive overt evil can be. If this film had been made just a year or two later after the Hays Code of Morality had kicked in, then what would have resulted would surely have been so deviolenced that syrup and pablum, rather than stark villainy, would have oozed in every frame. EMPLOYEES' ENTRANCE, thankfully retains the power of urgency that stamps this Depression-age movie as one to reckon with.
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11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
ZESTY AND HOT., August 30, 2002
This review is from: Employees' Entrance (Forbidden Hollywood) [VHS] (VHS Tape)
This 1933 film tells of the life of department store employees and its ruthless, amoral manager. Warren William, an actor I never cared much for before seeing this, gives an absolute bravura performance as Kurt Anderson. Solid support comes from 20 year-old Loretta (as Madeline) and, as the blonde flirt Polly, the now-rarely-seen Alice White is fine. The tyrannical William falls for Young, the wife of one of his subordinates: he eventually receives the comeuppance he deserves...Briskly written by Robert Presnell and excellently directed by Roy Del Ruth, this little pre-code flick is gripping, funny and outrageous.
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10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
There's Ruthless, But ....., March 10, 2002
This review is from: Employees' Entrance (Forbidden Hollywood) [VHS] (VHS Tape)
Loretta Young stars as a young model working in a department store run by a brutal manager played by Warren William. He's hated by all his employees, since he sets a high standard and will not suffer mistakes at all. His job is his life, giving him no time for romance or even relationships. He's not above using people for what he needs, though, and Young finds that out the hard way. This is one of those pre-Code films that gets away with a lot more (subject matter, dialogue, etc) than most films made just a few years later. It's also clearly a Warner Brothers film, with it's tough talking characters and quick pacing and editing. Some of William's speeches to his employees are really hard hitting, yet what he has to say is very true, just without normal human compassion. William doesn't hold back, delivering a forceful performance that certainly doesn't soften the edges of this hard character. Young is sweet and appealing, and Wallace Ford, her love and fellow employee, is good in the beginning, although his distraught moments towards the end are less effective. It's always fun to step back into history and watch a film like this. It's surprising just how "mature" films could be back then.
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