"The Devil's Cabaret" is a B level short with no performers who made names for themselves on the silver screen. Edward Buzzell (Howie Burns) turned to directing in 1931 and had mild success over 25 years.
This is typical of most forgettable shorts that were packaged with feature films in those days. Lesser talents are clear throughout, in the choreography, the dancers, the acting and the music. The script is awful. Even the ballet number toward the end doesn't have dancers using pointe. Instead of dancing on their toes, they clearly prance around on the balls of their feet. None of it is very good or entertaining. A closing line might sum up why MGM made this short at all - "for the hell of it."
Here's a sample of what must have been intended as comedy. Howie Burns, "I'll do my best to do my worst." And, "He's the one who invented barbed wire fence so the little birdies couldn't sit down."
One can't help but look at a film like this in the context of the times. America and the world were deep into the Great Depression by December 1930 when this film came out. More than a year earlier, the stock market crashed, ending the decade of the Roaring Twenties with a thud. That freewheeling period saw much of an increasingly city population reject traditional moral tenets.
Hollywood soon began cranking out comedies and heroic dramas to help lift the mood of the nation. British cinema did much of the same thing. Few movies were made in the 1930s, and very few since that time, that had a moral reckoning as their theme. Yet, here was this short musical comedy by MGM that does the opposite - on the surface. It seems to flaunt the devilish lifestyle. The message seems to be that it doesn't make any difference - in the end.
With widespread unemployment, bank failures, industry closures, long bread lines and little income for many beyond bare necessities, people needed some cheering up. So, this short film is a puzzle. Instead of providing some comic relief or giving a message of hope, it probably led many to remember the past decade. The film uses a familiar phrase from the Bible in jest -- about the wages of sin. One wonders how many in the audiences then might have considered that in a more serious vein.
This is typical of most forgettable shorts that were packaged with feature films in those days. Lesser talents are clear throughout, in the choreography, the dancers, the acting and the music. The script is awful. Even the ballet number toward the end doesn't have dancers using pointe. Instead of dancing on their toes, they clearly prance around on the balls of their feet. None of it is very good or entertaining. A closing line might sum up why MGM made this short at all - "for the hell of it."
Here's a sample of what must have been intended as comedy. Howie Burns, "I'll do my best to do my worst." And, "He's the one who invented barbed wire fence so the little birdies couldn't sit down."
One can't help but look at a film like this in the context of the times. America and the world were deep into the Great Depression by December 1930 when this film came out. More than a year earlier, the stock market crashed, ending the decade of the Roaring Twenties with a thud. That freewheeling period saw much of an increasingly city population reject traditional moral tenets.
Hollywood soon began cranking out comedies and heroic dramas to help lift the mood of the nation. British cinema did much of the same thing. Few movies were made in the 1930s, and very few since that time, that had a moral reckoning as their theme. Yet, here was this short musical comedy by MGM that does the opposite - on the surface. It seems to flaunt the devilish lifestyle. The message seems to be that it doesn't make any difference - in the end.
With widespread unemployment, bank failures, industry closures, long bread lines and little income for many beyond bare necessities, people needed some cheering up. So, this short film is a puzzle. Instead of providing some comic relief or giving a message of hope, it probably led many to remember the past decade. The film uses a familiar phrase from the Bible in jest -- about the wages of sin. One wonders how many in the audiences then might have considered that in a more serious vein.