Plot Intro
Min (Marie Dressler) is a working class woman who runs a tavern on the docks, much frequented by Bill (Wallace Beery), a fisherman. Min has been raising Nancy (Dorothy Jordan), who was left with her as a baby by her disreputable mother, Bella (Marjorie Rambeau). Min has kept Nancy’s parenthood a secret from her. But the authorities are closing in, and questioning why Nancy isn’t attending school…
We encounter a rarity in the Best Actress canon - a woman winning the award over the age of 40! It may come as little surprise that while the average age of a Best Actress winner is 36, the average age of a Best Actor winner is significantly older - at 44. The theory that age in men is revered while age in women is rejected is verified here. More so when we consider that the average age of a Best Supporting Actress is 40 and a Best Supporting Actor is 49. Furthermore, 32 women have won the Best Actress award before they turned 30. Only one man has ever done that- Adrian Brody at 27.
Marie Dressler was 63, and at the time she was very much enjoying a resurgence in her career. She started even before movies were invented, in vaudeville during the Victorian era. She moved into silent movies. But her career declined in the '20s leading to some tough financial times for her. Fortunately, she managed to break back in at 59 in 1927, crossed the border into talkies, and then, in 1930, Min and Bill ended up being one of her biggest hits, so much so that she and Wallace Beery were reunited for a similar movie, Tugboat Annie. She also had a remarkable string of successes (and other Oscar nominations) in the early '30s before she died of cancer in 1934, making her the first Best Actress winner to have died.
I’m glad that Min and Bill is our Dressler movie, because even at a minuscule 66 minutes, it’s a perfect portrayal of her talents. In contrast to the first three winners who prioritised glamour and poster-girl femininity, we’re seeing now an actress who, after decades of experience and hard-work, is at the pinnacle of her abilities. She combines the iron-faced aggression of the working class woman in the Depression - defensive, hugely protective of what little money she has, belligerent, and constantly frightened as the stability of her life sits on a knife’s edge.
But where Dressler truly succeeds is when she installs humour into the mix. Her frustratingly simple-minded values often make sense, and other times end up with her falling into the sea (seriously). Her bickering with Beery as Bill feels natural and was considered a hugely successful pairing. The scene in which they have a full on physical brawl shows that, even at their age, they have just as much vibrancy and energy as the younger players. Beery himself was very popular at the time, and went on to win Best Actor the next year.
As a result of this duality between being a Trunchbull and being a Charlie Chaplin, Dressler establishes one of the most empathetic characters I’ve ever seen. I won’t go into much detail about her actions as she tries to protect her tavern and her beloved Nancy, but by the end you see a woman who has been driven to very extreme actions, but sits safe in the knowledge that these actions have led to good fortune in others.
I highly recommend Min and Bill. It’s funny and sweet but provides sometimes dark insight into the desperation and fear that the poorer classes must have felt in the '30s. And of the first four Best Actress winners, Dressler is, for me, the best (so far that is!)
Highlight
The closing scenes. In fact, the closing shot of Min’s face. Dressler has no lines but conveys many layers of emotions about what has occurred at the movie’s climax.
Lowlight
There’s a scene involving a runaway boat that goes on a bit longer than it should. It has the slapstick humour of a Laurel and Hardy film but it could have been quicker and sharper.
Marks
9/10
This one was tricky for me because on the one hand I could tell that Marie Dressler was very very good, on the other hand because of poor sound quality and no subtitles I couldn’t hear a word of what was going on. Thank god for Wikipedia Plot Summaries…
It’s a whistle-stop tour through the poorer areas of the docks that we get in this just-over-an-hour film, and whistle-stop is really the only way to describe it. We very quickly meet young tearaway Nancy, rough-voiced Bill and then the woman of the hour: the dour, unflinching Min. The film belongs to Marie Dressler really because without it, this would be a simple piece of melodrama complete with ill-intentioned prostitutes and rather odd moments of utter slapstick shoehorned in (a scene where Min chases Bill angrily around the bed and throws things at him is just plain weird).
But this film does encapsulate what we set out to do on this second project - namely discover and celebrate great actresses. And it’s clear Marie Dressler slots neatly into this category. She’s utterly watchable, and bizarrely naturalistic against a cast of still-silent-film-acting actors. At point she’s doing nothing with her face or body, and yet managing - as the best actors do - to just emanate those feelings. We see her upright nature and refusal to crumble into emotion displayed fully throughout, which makes the slight smile in the last scene say so much. We immediately understand her priorities and her lack of regret despite her pretty melodramatic actions. And because we understand why she did all this - we empathise with her and like her.
She’s matched well by Wallace Beery but even he with his infamous ego (apparently insisting he was paid more than any other actor on set) knows this isn’t his film. She’s so good in fact that the next evening we went on to watch Dressler’s other film of 1930 - Anna Christie - starring Greta Garbo in her first speaking role. And it’s clear from this, that Dressler wasn’t a one-trick pony. In Christie, she played a drunken tart with a heart (Kat Slater but in her 60s), and did it tremendously well with sympathy, wit and a fair amount of guile. It’s great to meet her, and see her at work.
Elsewhere, the film for me lacked any real oomph, with a simple tale that didn’t particularly grab me. If it wasn’t for Dressler’s singular, naturalistic and compelling performance, I don’t think this would have much of an effect.
Highlight
Marie Dressler, in her 60s after a career in music hall, theatre and film, effortlessly knocking everyone else out of the spotlight. Glorious.
Lowlight
A dreary and not massively compelling plot.
Marks
6/10
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