Love Is Dangerous: A messy look at a broken home

Is this for you?

If you have a soft spot for pre-code melodrama where everyone is just a little bit miserable, you might find something to latch onto here. If you prefer your movies to have a point or at least a character you can actually root for, you’re going to hate this.

It’s not exactly a *fun* watch. It feels like someone took a bunch of domestic problems and threw them into a blender.

Observations from the couch

Rochelle Hudson spends a lot of this movie looking like she’s about to cry, which, to be fair, is probably the right reaction to her situation. Her husband is this total disaster of a person. Watching him stumble around, you wonder why she doesn't just pack a bag and leave before the first act finishes.

The daughter, on the other hand, is just wildly lonely. She’s looking for love in all the wrong places, and the movie handles it with about as much grace as a car crash.

• The lighting in the kitchen scene is weirdly dark.
• The husband’s drunken walk is almost impressive, honestly.
• I kept waiting for someone to just sit down and have a normal conversation. It never happened.

It reminded me a bit of the suffocating feeling in The Call of the Soul, where everyone is trapped by their own bad choices. It’s not quite as sharp, though.

There’s a moment near the middle where a door slams and the entire set shakes for a split second. Nobody fixed it. I kind of loved that.

The pacing is all over the place. Sometimes scenes drag on until you’re counting the patterns on the wallpaper, then suddenly everything is shouting and weeping. It’s not smooth, but it’s human in a really jagged way.

Final thoughts

Is it a classic? No. Is it interesting? Maybe if you’re into the way these old films treated family trauma like a stage play gone wrong. Don’t expect any big answers here. It just kind of ends, leaving you to wonder if anyone actually learned a lesson. Probably not. 🥃