Dinner at Eight (1933)

Nice effects though.

Good movie but grossly overrated

A lot of perfectly good film show their cards early, establish a unique premise and let the audience explore a topic at a leisurely pace, without much in terms of surprise. this film is not one of those films.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

I bought the Turner-Classic 4-movie set of Harlow, and she is excellent in all 4. 'Dinner at 8' I had not seen in a long time, but I did recall some juicy conflict between Beery and Harlow. The camera loved Harlow (as it did Monroe, 20 years later). The sets, lighting and her ensemble truly highlighted her beauty and sensuality. Her ability to feign 'culture' - and then talk like a carnaval barker the next minute is delightful to regard.Being a 'pre-code' film, we also get some frankness that would have been excised only a few years later: Harlow is having an affair with a handsome family doctor, who, according to his faithful wife, is a frequent philanderer; Marie Dressler confesses that she has acquired expensive jewelry from men in her previous relationships that were not matrimonial; pretty Madge Evans--engaged to a very suitable partner--falls in love with a charming, but over-the-hill, alcoholic actor (John Barrymore). These indiscretions are presented openly (without skin), in the spirit of pre-code films, which presented imperfect characters who seemed lifelike, and sometimes suffered for their sins - but sometimes didn't.Contrast this to 'China Seas' made only a few years later with Harlow and Clark Gable: Gable says he will stick with his pretty former-consort Harlow--even marry her--but first she must face the justice system for her role in an attempted theft. I doubt the original story ended that way, but the Code demanded that villains NOT prosper from their nefarious deeds - so, Harlow will face prison for 3 to 5, I guess. If made in 1932, that film would have ended with Gable suppressing the role Harlow played, and marrying her the same day, in a local church! In Dinner at 8, at least 2 leading female characters are guilty of unfaithfulness, but neither really 'face the music'. My point is: at least in pre-code films, the guilty didn't have to suffer harsh consequences -- hence, the writers had more freedom to wrap up the story as they saw fit.This is a fine ensemble cast, featuring Harlow at her prettiest and maybe most feisty (she & Beery disliked one another - so, maybe art was imitating life!?). Recommended.

There is a lot of melodrama in this movie, and the first part, especially when Marie Dressler is not on the screen, can be slow going. Once we get to the night of the dinner, however, it gets much better.Billie Burke's scenes, both at the news that the aspic has been dropped and when she berates her husband and daughter for coming to her with their problems when she has a dinner to give, are both funny and very sad at the same time, sad that any person could be so caught up in the superficial to get that upset over it.The scene where Lee Tracy tells off Larry Renault is also very well done. (The scene after that, John Barrymore's last, descends into real melodrama and becomes, for me, hard to watch.) After that, the scene between Jean Harlow and Wallace Berry is brilliant. It is rather like *All About Eve* in that it shows just how low human beings can descend in a desire to destroy each other.And then there is the dinner party itself. Harlow has several great moments, and looks like a million dollars, but the ugliest person on the set by far, Marie Dressler, gets the prize for her delivery of the last lines, as she walks with Harlow into Dinner at Eight.

My mother and I watched most of this movie, expecting it to be a comedy (from what the box said). Comedy? There was not a single laugh or even smile to be had. The movie ranged from boring to unpleasant, and there were plenty of big stars but nary a likable or sympathetic character in the lot.The movie stars a wealthy New York woman who wants to throw a dinner party for the purpose of social advancement, with her husband reluctantly going along. She invites over a wealthy British couple who are coming to the United States, and invites a number of other people to have the proper number, as well as the right mixture of males and females. But everyone has some sort of dark secret; the couple's daughter, who has a fiancée, has fallen in love with an actor whose career is failing; the husband's company is in serious financial trouble; a former actress is also in financial difficulty; a bullying former miner is secretly buying out the husband's company's stock, and his wife is having an affair; and this is just a sample of the betrayals and intrigues that are going on.This could have had the makings of a comedy, but we found no jokes or any other reasons to laugh. Nor did we end up caring what happened to any of the characters in the story. Pass up this dinner invitation.

With the last sounds of the frightening echo coming from the 1929 Economic Crash in Wall Street "Dinner at Eight" delivers ruthless and unsympathetic characters who are trying to live the best lives they can get with glamour, style, away from their husbands and wives but together with their lovers, even though most of them are doomed to failure. The stage play of this might be interesting, funny and warmful but George Cukor's film with all the classic stars from MGM didn't add anything to his career simply because is boring, tedious to the fullest and we, as audiences, have no other place to go other than watch this film because it is often mentioned in lists of great films of all time, and when you see the constellation of stars present in this tragedy, names like John Barrymore, Marie Dressler, Billie Burke, Lionel Barrymore, Jean Harlow, Wallace Beery among others you really would expect something at least decent. It turns out to be a very boring movie that has no point, no direction, no meaning and it's not even a good entertainment.It's just a plain boring picture with a almost ensemble casting. Almost because there's something about the acting here that makes this film worth of a few stars. Harlow and Beery were great, they have the funniest scenes in the movie as a rich couple that seems to never go along right; Lionel Barrymore and Marie Dressler are quite well too; John Barrymore plays a figure that resembles himself, a decadent and drunk actor who lives in a hotel without having money to pay for, and desperate to find a good play to act. He's the most interesting in the film and his solid dramatic acting made this more watchable. Billie Burke was completely annoying as the lady who invites all those rich people for the so mentioned Dinner at Eight, a confusing and strange celebration of the bourgeoisie futility.And to think that Herman J. Mankiewicz wrote this (in a few years away, in the shadows of his drunkenness and trying to recover his fame he wrote what would become the best film of all time, and that is "Citizen Kane") and George Cukor ("Born Yesterday") were behind all this mess. A play that takes one and a half hour to get to its title, the disastrous dinner has to be badly translated to the screen. Nothing happens, the characters lives are filled with sorrow, failed things and everyone's pretend to be happy (or at least there's some who get fully loaded with drinks so that's why the so called happiness) and the meaning....well, there isn't one really.For a drama it is boring (sorry, I can't find another word to say about this film) and for a comedy it is very unfunny with one or two well humored moments. For the most of its core it's silly, silly, silly. I had a bad headache before and during the film and it got real worse after it. But barely I would know that my next one would be even worst than this ("The Family Stone" but please do read my review of it) and that's why "Dinner at Eight" gets 3 stars, this and because of the casting. 3/10