The Wet Parade (1932)

Absolutely Brilliant!

Clever, believable, and super fun to watch. It totally has replay value.

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

If I had one piece of advice for people wanting to try out films of the 1930s, it would be to check out any movie with Walter Huston in it. From Gabriel Over the White House to Kongo to The Beast of the City and more, the man was in some of the weirdest and most interesting films of the period. Here we have a film about the dangers of alcohol, made a year before prohibition ended. The film seems to be both anti-alcohol and anti-prohibition, which makes for some fascinating think-work about what the movie is really trying to advocate.The film starts with Lewis Stone's Colonel Sanders-looking Southern patriarch, whose daughter (Dorothy Jordan) is trying to get him to quit drinking. After a short while we move North to a fresh-faced Robert Young and his lush of a father Walter Huston. The two stories eventually intersect as Young falls in love with the daughter. Prohibition passes which leads to a tragedy for Young, who decides to become a treasury agent and is partnered with Jimmy Durante (!). From here the movie hits a bit of a lull as we get a fairly typical T-man story until the final minutes, which are exciting.The film offers some great moments such as the haunting image of Lewis Stone's final fate or the powerful scene where Walter Huston's wife confronts him about his bootleg liquor. The cast is excellent. The performances are melodramatic but in the best way. In addition to the stars already mentioned, we also have Neil Hamilton, Myrna Loy, and Wallace Ford. Not a bad lineup.As an entertainment piece, I think it's solid. But it has added value as a historical curio, allowing modern audiences to get perspective on the thoughts and feelings at the time regarding an important period in our history.

It's difficult to find old movies that I haven't already seen, so it was with great anticipation that I watched The Wet Parade, 1932, for the first time. It was like taking a vicarious time machine journey that landed smack in the middle of one of America's less memorable self-righteous escapades: The Prohibition. The best part is that this intensely dramatic flick was made a full year before prohibition ended, so the full flavor of the alcohol-soaked theme really hits home. It includes some historically accurate details, which were still very fresh in everyone's minds when the movie was produced. It also depicts some of the darker details of desolation and desperation the general public wrestled with after losing complete access to drinkable alcohol. Walter Huston, one of Hollywood's most convincing actors of his era, outdoes himself in this movie. Young Robert Young is quite dashing in his role, although the sight of him paired up with the gregarious Jimmy Durante might prompt a quick reality check if you're not prepared for this early "odd couple" concept.

There are movies which were made a long time ago and which seemed today as relevant as they were then;"the wet parade" is not one of them: it oddly blends melodrama with social comment and a touch of film noir thrown in.The first part is a muddled one,very confuse ,and the characters are not really interesting.Its purpose is to make us understand the heroine's daddy died because of the booze :she becomes hysterical as she screams -when his friends are drinking to her late father's memory- that whiskey and other liquors should be thrown in a cesspool ,no less.Second part involves a love affair between her and Robert Young,who also lost his father because... (well you get the picture)and a second one between her brother and Myrna loy who keeps a speakeasy during the prohibition.In parallel,Young and his pal Durante - who provides the film with the comic relief it did need - become some kind of Eliott Nesses.Durante is the stand-out of the movie.The movie ends with a long moral speech about the generation to come:God help 'em and preserve 'em from the devil's liquor.

One of my favorite movies mostly because I'm a Jimmy Durante fan and he plays, of all things, a treasury agent during prohibition! True, that doesn't stop him from being somewhat funny, cracking jokes and displaying his comedic talents, so anyone who likes Durante will enjoy his participation in this movie. There is also some fine ensemble acting from the large cast as we see some of the evils of liquor both before and during prohibition. And there's a great scene showing bootleggers making phony whiskey using wood alcohol and printing labels saying it was pre-prohibition liquor or from Canada.I noticed two onscreen credit errors: Frederick Burton is listed as playing Major Randolph, and Reginald Barlow is listed as playing Judge Brandon. The character names were erroneously interchanged.