Belle of the Nineties. 1934. USA. Directed by Leo McCarey. Written by Mae West. With Mae West, Roger Pryor, John Mack Brown, Katherine DeMille, Duke Ellington. 4K DCP restoration. 73 min.
Mae West was born in Brooklyn, not the Gulf Coast, and her character, Ruby Carter, hails from St. Louis, not New Orleans, but Belle of the Nineties emerges nonetheless as a robust tribute to the city it loves. West plays a new-to-town vaudevillian whose romantic entanglements offer mere pretext for her buxom, witty insinuations and infectious love of life (and love). The showstopper is West’s rendition of “My Old Flame,” which, thanks to backing from the Duke Ellington Orchestra, became an instant-classic jazz standard. Belle of the Nineties helped solidify New Orleans’s cinematic reputation as a place where desires for sex, love, and pure play could run freely.