"Who wants to go to hell with Madam Satan?" - Madam Satan, Madam Satan
"It's a metaphor." - Lincoln, Broad City

Wild, unpredictable precode romcom musical goes from screwball to gonzo (imagine costumes designed in a collaboration between Dalí and Liberace) to I-dunno-what all in the name of entertainment. Behind the "adult" innuendos and revealing outfits the movie is ultimately quite conservative at its core, which just makes the whole thing even weirder as a cultural artifact.

Esses cinéfilos, viu, tsc tsc tsc... Incorrigíveis, bando de bitolados, depravados, desvairados e despolitizados.

JEAN-CECIL-LUC, por Luc Moullet

Ainda bem que a nova ordem do pensamento, pelas ações da benigna consciência inquisitória que nos redimirá do passado de erros/dos erros do passado de toda a humanidade pré-contemporaneidade, a era em que a humanidade finalmente ascendeu à verdadeira consciência holística do que é bom e certo (vejam o mundo ao redor, nunca esteve melhor; e o debate político, nunca mais próspero), colocou-os no seu devido e merecido lugar: o opróbrio.

This film means a lot to me personally. I just love it with all of it’s beautiful craziness!

If not quite all the vampin' & dirigibliss I had hoped for, it's still altogether curious spectacle enough to admire, even despite the lulls where the farce could be sprightlier and not so sorrowful. Because the narrative subscribes to the adulterous husband's explanation that he's a shitty cad because his wife made him one, the latter-half masked shenanigans seem more than a little tragic amidst the otherwise lighthearted costume extravagances and airship disaster. As Madam Satan she seems too wonderfully arch for some louse. I wish she kept the mask forever.

2nd film in the Reginald Denny night on TCM! One of my favorite Reg Denny films! 🥰

Reg Denny singing and dancing while wearing tights. 🔥💦

All the show-off bits -- the deco sets, the bizarre costumes at the costume ball, the dirigible madness in general -- are in the second half, but I honestly liked the first hour better. It's funny, crisply paced and elegant, excellent comedy, occupying a tonal niche halfway between Lubitsch and The Front Page. I thought it was really good stuff.

By comparison, when they get up into the air, the dialogue gets stuffy and moralistic, with Madame S. making banal points about honesty and loyalty in the most pointed way. The preaching rubs me all wrong... though the spectacle is fun.

And of course "wild, outta-control party in a venue that could blow up at any second" is a metaphor for life in the late twenties. Before the stock market crash and stuff.

I L<3ve Musicals!

This early musical has been variously described by those who have seen it as a 'train wreck', 'hard to forget', 'loopy', 'crazy', and if you have to endure a fairly pedestrian first hour to get to the jaw-dropping bits, where everyone cavorts around with a large zeppelin, eye-popping costumes, and a large dollop of weirdness, then it is worth the wait.

It's a blast, and I have nothing much to add to the observations already made about this mess of a film. It's nominally a romantic comedy but it is far odder than that, and certainly the strangest film to involve either DeMille or MGM.

Madam Satan (1930) means a lot to me because it brought me to Reginald Denny!!!!!!!! 😍

Esses cinéfilos, viu, tsc tsc tsc... Incorrigíveis, bando de bitolados, depravados, desvairados e despolitizados.

JEAN-CECIL-LUC, por Luc Moullet

Ainda bem que a nova ordem do pensamento, pelas ações da benigna consciência inquisitória que nos redimirá do passado de erros/dos erros do passado de toda a humanidade pré-contemporaneidade, a era em que a humanidade finalmente ascendeu à verdadeira consciência holística do que é bom e certo (vejam o mundo ao redor, nunca esteve melhor; e o debate político, nunca mais próspero), colocou-os no seu devido e merecido lugar: o opróbrio.

Madam Satan (1930 dir. Cecil B. Demille) literally prefigured the Hindenburg disaster

She wanted to test her husband
She knew exactly what to do
A pseudonym to fool him
She couldn't have made a worse move

[...] She wanted to take it further
So she arranged a place to go
To see if he
Would fall for her incognito

Babooshka - Kate Bush

Apart from the awesome title, and the fabulous costume, there is nothing to see here. It has the depth of an episode of Friends.

Whilst not the biggest masterpiece, Cecil B Demille still tries  to deliver a fun and comedic experience with great camera work and a dazzling costume from Kay Johnson who also tries to give a solid performance. The only thing that threw off the duration was all the musical moments which should’ve been taken out.

The morale of the story is to think very carefully before going to a masquerade ball on a dirigible.

Reg Denny singing and dancing while wearing tights. 🔥💦

Titanic the in skies, absurd camp, wish more movies had ridiculously drastic tonal shifts.

i do really like this film and how over the top it is, even though it bombed back in the day and with fair enough reason.