Programme notes CH 04 — The Matinee
Madam Satan
A neglected wife puts on a mask and a reputation to win her husband back at a party aboard a zeppelin.
Cecil B. DeMille made one musical, and it is this: a drawing-room comedy that boards a zeppelin halfway through and never comes down. Kay Johnson is the proper wife who learns that her husband (Reginald Denny) prefers a showgirl (Lillian Roth), so she takes a mask and a new name to a costume party moored over Manhattan to steal him back. Roland Young, as the friend caught in the middle, gets the driest lines. Then the party becomes a mechanical ballet, Theodore Kosloff dances Electricity, a storm breaks the moorings and the guests leave by parachute. Watch the mask: the plot rests on a husband not knowing his wife across a dance floor, and DeMille nearly makes you believe it.
Credits — follow anyone
- Directed by
- Cecil B. DeMille
- Photographed by
- Harold Rosson
Every name is a door — each opens onto everything else that person made in the network.
The thread · every thread
MGM, 1930, the same question twice: what does a wife do when her husband strays? Norma Shearer answers it in kind and calls it equality; Kay Johnson answers it in costume and calls it Madam Satan. Both films side with the wife, and neither quite lets her off.