The Best Old Movies on a Big Screen This Week: NYC Repertory Cinema Picks, August 24-30
Madam Satan (1930)
Directed by Cecil B. DeMille
Looking to out your philandering lover? If you’re planning extravagantly, better crib from DeMille’s musical rampage of…well, who can say? A comedy of errors, sure, but being Pre-Code, there’s no shortage of saucy—even ribald—innuendo wading through Kay Johnson’s perusal of hubby Reginald Denny’s ill mores. Mix-ups abound, but they’re tame compared to Madam Satan‘s hard left turn into a Busby Berkeley-esque Ambien dream: an orgiastic masquerade ball aboard a zeppelin, headed by dancing gears, works, and sparks. A bachelorette auction ensues, but all horny eyes fire upon lushly disguised Johnson, vengefully offering Denny one last temptation. A full-blooded dance with the devil in the pale moonlight, flanked by willful bows to Satan, punctures any last romantic notions of “old-fashioned wholesomeness” before the airship takes upon a crazed metaphor that the Hindenberg folks clearly learned nothing from. Truly one of the weirdest romps of any era. Max Kyburz (August 30, 7pm, 9:30pm at BAM’s “That’s Entertainment!: MGM Musicals, Part I”)