Lady for a Day (1933)
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Lady for a Day Movie Review
Lady for a Day is a 1933 comedy film directed by Frank Capra and starring May Robson. It’s a solid and frequently quite touching, but in the end rather disappointing flick.
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“Never in all my questionable career
have I gazed upon such divine loveliness“
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Now the premise itself is awesome. An old fruit seller awaits the arrival of her daughter from Spain whom she never met, but in order to impress her she somehow arranges to become a lady from high society. It’s a terrific premise absolutely perfect for 30s comedies, but the execution itself left a lot to be desired.
The movie is rather slow at first, but still very effective in the scenes with our old protagonist and just having this type of old, poor protagonist in this time period is a rarity and needs to be respected. She’s by far the film’s heart and soul and thanks in no small part to May Robson’s terrific performance which is one of the greatest of this year and deservedly Oscar-nominated, and in my opinion she was better than Katharine Hepburn who was rather theatrical in ‘Morning Glory’.
But then the movie succumbs because it tries to heavily focus on the other characters and they simply aren’t as interesting. None of the male characters in this movie were remotely interesting to me and by focusing on them, the movie really lost its focus, its drive and goal.
Lady for a Day is well acted across the board and featuring strong dialogue per usual for these 30s comedies. The humor is also quite good at times, but simply never on the level of the greatest classics from this period and that’s why it disappointed me the most.
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I did love many plot points here individually speaking, but as a whole, the movie struggled. I liked the ending, but I would have preferred for her daughter to uncover what’s going on and accept her mother for who she is.
This is one of Frank Capra’s earlier movies and in that regard, he is to be admired for this effort, but because he’s one of my favorite directors and I just adored many of his flicks, this one simply wasn’t up to par to his many classics. Its Best Picture nod was thus not as deserved, but the one for Adapted Screenplay is respectable.
Lady for a Day has many great plot points and memorable moments throughout its runtime, but as a whole it just doesn’t click as well as it should have. May Robson delivered one of the finest performances of this year and her character’s great, but the other characters aren’t all that interesting. It’s a solid early effort from Frank Capra with a killer premise, but the execution wasn’t the greatest or the funniest leading to one of his lesser achievements.
