Dinner at Eight

Eight people isn’t a dinner!” Millicent Jordan (Marie Dressler) is beside herself: her daughter is lovesick, her husband, who is on the verge of bankruptcy, feels ill and wants to lie down, and her society dinner, planned down to the last detail, is about to fall through. The guests have either been arrested, are dying, or – because they are part of the aristocracy – refuse to associate with new-rich upstarts. The film draws to a close when the dinner finally takes place. The star ensemble - including Marie Dressler, John Barrymore, Wallace Beery, Jean Harlow, Lionel Barrymore, and Billie Burke – does not shine so much together in one place but circles in smaller individual units around bankruptcies, (extramarital) relationships, neuroses and vanities. A bitterly wicked pre-Code comedy. (mg)