Welcome to Public Domain Theater, your home for the wonderful world of films that have (in the United States, at least) fallen into the public domain, and are free for everyone to see!
This month, we’re proud to present the 1938 screwball comedy The Rage of Paris. It’s the story of Nicole de Cortillon (Danielle Darrieux), a beautiful but impoverished woman whose friends cook up one doozy of a scheme: they’ll pile their savings together so that, for a couple months, Nicole can rent the opulent clothes and swanky hotel rooms needed to pose as a wealthy socialite newly arrived from Paris, on the premise that within those two months Nicole will be able to land a wealthy socialite husband, and let them all share in the unwitting sugar daddy’s largesse.
It can’t go as planned, of course. Nicole’s chosen mark has a best friend, Jim Trevor (Douglas Fairbanks) who sees right through the scam, and devotes themself to exposing Nicole as a con artist. What follows is a battle of wits and wills as Jim tries to discredit Nicole and Nicole tries to discredit Jim’s discreditation, the two pulling all manner of wacky hoodwinks on each other … and (naturally) falling in love despite themselves.
The film is a fun romp with charismatic leads, some great gags, and a nice balance of sweetness and irreverence to its enemies-to-lovers relationship.
To match that fun romp energy, our opening cartoon will be a lively little short starring Mickey Mouse! At the start of the year, we celebrated Mickey’s first cartoon, “Steamboat Willie”, entering the public domain, but that wasn’t the only Mickey Mouse cartoon whose copyright expired this year. We also have the Western/swashbuckler spoof “The Gallopin’ Guacho”, a cartoon that predates Mickey’s (and Disney’s) family friendly image: this is a Mickey Mouse who drinks beer and smokes cigarettes, and a Minnie Mouse who has an oddly sexualized design.
So stop on by Public Domain Theater, won’t you, for a good round of laughs with some classic comedies from the public domain!
Opening Cartoon:
Feature Presentation:
