#120: Merrily We Go to Hell
Part of the Top 150 Films series
The only thing worse than a drunkard is a reformed drunkard. A delightful Pre-Code sex and alcohol comedy, Merrily We Go to Hell — along with most of the films of Dorothy Arzner — deserves to be much more widely known than it currently is. Fredric March plays a struggling playwright undone by alcoholism and adultery. Sylvia Sidney plays his wife who, when she discovers his affairs, begins having her own with Cary Grant, in one of his earliest roles. The holy state of “modern” matrimony is brought into delectable disrepute, with “single lives, twin beds and triple bromides in the morning” becoming par for the course for the characters. March and Sidney are glorious, and Arzner’s winning direction means that, rather than turning this scenario into farce or melodrama (or exploiting the potential vulgarity that could arise with the territory), the pathos and inherent comedy rise to the surface.
