What to expect
Howard Hawks’s early comedy treats courtship, monarchy, and modern finance as forms of performance, with William Powell already adept at polished manipulation.
How to ease in
The premise is deliberately artificial. Follow who is being paid, who knows the arrangement, and when a rehearsed attraction begins producing unrehearsed consequences.
Heads-up
A quick, non-exhaustive note Includes sexual bargaining, class hierarchy, deception, smoking, and period gender stereotypes.
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Everyone begins by treating romance as a service with a price. I enjoy the point at which emotion becomes inconvenient precisely because the arrangement has been so carefully designed.
— Momo
Credits & versions
Version map
Sources for the facts
Where to go next
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