Love, Honor and Oh, Baby! is a weird, dusty little relic

Is it worth your time?

If you're into the kind of frantic, wordy comedies that defined the early 30s, you might actually enjoy this. It’s light, it’s fluffy, and it moves fast enough that you don't have to think about the plot holes.

Cinematic perspective: Exploring the visual vocabulary of Love, Honor and Oh, Baby! (1933) through its definitive frames.

But if you need your movies to have, you know, actual stakes or logical character motivations, you are going to hate every second of this. It’s a bit like watching a bunch of people play a very loud, very expensive game of tag.

Cinematic perspective: Exploring the visual vocabulary of Love, Honor and Oh, Baby! (1933) through its definitive frames.

The whole premise hinges on a fake breach of contract lawsuit. It’s the kind of scheme that would get you disbarred in about five minutes today, but here it's treated like a genius masterstroke. Watching Zasu Pitts try to navigate the nonsense is the only reason to stick around past the halfway point. She has this way of looking absolutely bewildered that makes me think she realized how thin the script was while they were filming.

Cinematic perspective: Exploring the visual vocabulary of Love, Honor and Oh, Baby! (1933) through its definitive frames.

There’s a scene about twenty minutes in where the dialogue becomes so rapid-fire it almost sounds like a foreign language. It’s honestly impressive how many words they cram into a single minute. You can tell the actors are exhausted by it. I think I saw one guy blink like six times in a row just trying to keep his place.

Cinematic perspective: Exploring the visual vocabulary of Love, Honor and Oh, Baby! (1933) through its definitive frames.

Some random notes from my pad:

• The sets feel strangely claustrophobic, like the walls are actually closing in on the actors.
• Verree Teasdale is doing a lot of heavy lifting here, and honestly, she deserves a nap after this production.
• I kept thinking about Welcome Danger while watching this, mainly because of that same weird, manic energy that feels slightly unhinged.
• The wardrobe department clearly spent the entire budget on hats. There are so many hats.

There’s this one bit where a lawyer is explaining the contract, and the camera just stays on his face for way, way too long. It starts to feel like he’s staring into your soul. I found myself checking my phone just to break the eye contact. It’s those tiny, awkward choices that make these old studio pictures feel so bizarrely human. It’s not smooth, it’s not polished, it’s just there.

Cinematic perspective: Exploring the visual vocabulary of Love, Honor and Oh, Baby! (1933) through its definitive frames.

By the time they get to the resolution, I had mostly stopped caring about the money or the marriage or whatever the hell they were fighting about. The movie feels like it loses its own train of thought about forty minutes in. It just sort of drifts until the credits pop up.

It’s not a masterpiece, and it’s definitely not a lost classic. It’s just a weird, dusty little artifact that exists because a studio had a camera and a quota to fill. 🎬