The Moth (1934)
Wealthy young socialite Diane Wyman squanders her fortune and becomes involved in a scandalous raid at a wild party. Her legal guardian, a lecherous old man who has the hots for her, hires a private detective to spy on her. He tails her to a train headed for New Orleans, but she catches on to him. She befriends a young woman aboard the train and they both give the private eye the slip. What Diane doesn't know, however, is that that her newfound friend is actually a notorious criminal known as The Moth, and she has her own reasons for helping Diane escape--she, too, is being tailed by a detective, who's after a cache of jewels she's stolen.
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Such a frustrating disappointment
When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.
This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.
It is interesting even when nothing much happens, which is for most of its 3-hour running time. Read full review
Don't let the fancy costume on the DVD box fool you; "The Moth" is not another attempt for the exotic a la "Madam Satan". If this costume as part of a Mardis Gras celebration appeared, it has been cut and only utilized as a selling point for this late pre-code drama that has a few interesting moments but is basically a cheaply made, static story of what happens when young girls leave behind the manners they've been brought up with and head out to be jazz babies. Sally O'Neil is shown in the first reel as a seriously troubled party girl, boozing too much, flirting too much, stripping off her clothes too much. Oh, if it were only as exciting as it sounds. A fairly decent party sequence where she ends up being arrested for public indecency turns to a scene with her father's estate planner who informs her that due to her behavior, she has been cut out of her daddy's will. She runs off, is followed by her family's private investigator (Paul Page), and ends up involved with a jewel thief known as "The Moth" (Rae Daggett, accompanied by Duncan Renaldo). As Mardis Gras breaks into celebration, dumb detective Fred Kelsey gets on her trail as well, and it is up to Page to prove her innocent and get her back on the right track.O'Neil is just satisfactory as the bad girl/heroine who is a few years past the age of rebellion but still has a jazz baby quality about her which makes her acceptable as a young party girl. The highlight of the film is her feisty attitude at the party and an encounter with a prim and proper old busy body (Georgia O'Dell) on the train who keeps trying to give her morality lessons to no avail, all the while thinking that she (not O'Neil) is being ogled by Page. More effort could have gone into showing the audience what goes on at a Mardi Gras celebration (minus the request for beads), and ultimately, this ends up being more a lesson in teaching young adults proper behavior. I'd be surprised if the price of a ticket didn't come with free coupons for a cold shower. A poor print is also detrimental to keeping the modern audience's interest. The ending only insinuates with the arrival of O'Neil's aunt and solicitor in New Orleans that if she becomes respectable, she may just get her estate back.
In "The Moth", Sally O'Neil plays Diana Wyman. Wyman is a spoiled brat living off an inheritance. However, instead of using the money slowly or with common sense, she blows it on booze, wild parties and the like. Because of this, she's out of money for the year--and she still has seven more months to go. So how does she deal with this? She goes off on a binge and is caught by the police doing some sort of lewd dance. Later, after stomping off and informing her guardian that she can 'take care of herself', she runs off to New Orleans to party at the Mardi Gras! Now all this is during the height of the Depression--and I wonder how audiences of the day felt as they watched this completely self- absorbed brat on her adventures.On the way to New Orleans, Diana spots a man who is following her and she assumes he's a detective hired by her guardian. At the same time, a notorious criminal, 'the Moth', is being followed by a detective. The pair of women end up becoming friends and hang out together in New Orleans--and I really couldn't have cared less about their adventures or about Diana!The film is not just badly written but it presents a leading lady so horrid that you didn't care about her budding romance later in the film- -you just wanted to see her run over by a bus! Not enjoyable in the least.
Frankly, I didn't find it that much worse than most other movies of the period -- the ones that came from studios with names like PRC, Eagle Lion, Monogram, Gower Gulch, Poverty Row. It goes without saying that some of these were artistic treasures. I proffer the excellent Hungarian studio, Az Éhezéstől, as a European producer of aesthetic achievements on tiny budgets.Consider that the equipment of the time was cumbersome. With sound, the noisy cameras had to be hidden in a blimp-shaped container known to the industry cognoscenti as a "blimp." The microphones could be found in buttonholes and vases. Ladies in long dresses might be trailing wires.Speech being new, coaches and actors were brought in from the theater and ordinary pronunciation turned into elocution for many actors. Example here: Wilfred Lucas as the attorney in charge of Sally O'Neil's trust fund. Every phoneme is as precise as the constituents of an expensive Swiss watch.As the flapper, on the other hand, Sally O'Neil cannot shake the damp the echoes of Bayonne, New Jersey, in her lines. Bayonne, once known as the garden spot of the industrial North, has two well-known features: a multitude of ruddy great oil storage tanks and a magnificent view of the skyline of New York City across the Hudson. Frank Langella is from Bayonne. So were Sandra Dee and Brian Keith. So let's have no more aspersions cast on Bayonne.Anyway, Sally O'Neil, whose star dimmed with the coming of sound, plays a reckless society girl whose money disappears. Fortunately, her legs don't disappear. They are featured in the film's first shot, and they're long and shapely. Later, at a drunken party, she waltzes around in her underwear, in a very artistic scene of the sort that was permitted in the pre-code period. She really is cute.Humiliated, O'Neil skips town for New Orleans, followed by the man who's been asked to keep an eye on her, Paul Page. Page overacts outrageously but that's okay because everyone else does too. It's Mardi Gras in New Orleans. It's always Mardi Gras in New Orleans in the movies. Two clearly gay guys flirt with Page on the street. There is some genuinely interesting footage of a real Mardi Gras parade, circa 1930, inserted at this point.Summing it all up, O'Neil gets mixed up with a thief and his moll. Page becomes her boy friend. It all ends in such a way that the viewer will emit a satisfied sigh.
"The Moth" is a stupefyingly bad movie that fails on every level imaginable. Apparently written by a high school drama club, it contains some of the most severe overacting ever seen on the silver screen, and it is evident why this film has not been seen since its release.As stated in the summary, "The Moth" is a female jewel thief but there is no plot twist or device here to interest anyone, cinephile or not. In fact, it is devoid of suspense and substance and it is hard to tell if it is just a poor drama or an unfunny comedy. I bought it from Alpha Video and it is not their fault it is an inferior motion picture. They probably have never seen it, and I wish I could say the same. With luck, this will be the only review ever posted for "The Moth". Hate to think someone else got stuck with this dog of a film. Little care was taken in the production of this picture and it spoils the viewers' enjoyment.