Coke isn't something somebody absolutely NEEDS to go on living... - ElectricKoolaidAcid
How much do you know about cocaine dependency, let alone had any experience with it? No one NEEDS cocaine, or heroin, or cigarettes (nicotine), or coffee (caffeine), but if you're hooked it sure feels like you need the drug to go on living.
I've heard that quitting cigarettes is harder to do than to quit heroin; having never tried heroin, I cannot compare, but I smoked for years, and it was a challenge to quit--and I cannot say that I didn't fall off the wagon a few times after I had "officially" quit.
More to the point of this movie: In my foolish youth I spent a couple of months burning through a savings account as I went on a coke binge. I'd been an occasional sniffer before that, but during this time snorting blow was my full-time job. It got to the point that I couldn't wait to snort my next line even as my nose by now was practically screaming in pain--and I got so deluded that I convinced myself that I needed that next line so the temporary anesthetic properties of the cocaine would dull the pain in my nose!
Fortunately, I ran out of money and after a rough couple of days was fairly back to normal. I indulged a few times after that but nowhere near that binge, and then I finally grew up enough to lose that interest in recreational drugs.
Three on a Match is quite veiled in its allusions to Vivian's drug usage--I had to watch certain scenes again to pick up the hints--and it is possible that she is a heroin sniffer, but my vote is that she's hooked on coke. And that's a pretty big jones.
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"Man becomes the food of the divinity he worships." - Chris Stevens
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xdayton
10 years ago
I'd say cocaine, what with all the nose rubbing. And remember, this was the era of Reefer Madness -- Hollywood wasn't too concerned with getting the details right, they just wanted to scare. So the blurring of the lines between coke and heroin isn't hard to figure out -- they weren't making a documentary, after all.
But it was pretty daring, nonetheless. This kind of depiction would be eliminated entirely from films for decades after the Hayes Code was in place.
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darryl-tahirali
10 years ago
I'd say cocaine, what with all the nose rubbing. And remember, this was the era of Reefer Madness -- Hollywood wasn't too concerned with getting the details right, they just wanted to scare. So the blurring of the lines between coke and heroin isn't hard to figure out -- they weren't making a documentary, after all.
But it was pretty daring, nonetheless. This kind of depiction would be eliminated entirely from films for decades after the Hayes Code was in place. - xdayton
Any substance ingested nasally can prompt nose-rubbing, and heroin-sniffing had been going on for a while, although I don't know how prevalent it was in the late 1920s and early 1930s. However, Vivian's jittery behavior and the dark circles under her eyes seems consistent with a coke user.
Reefer Madness and its ilk (such as
The Cocaine Fiends) actually came out a few years after
Three on a Match, and they were designed explicitly as scare movies (
Reefer Madness notoriously so) unlike
Match, which folded its allusions to drug use casually into the narrative, part of the reason why it was so "daring," as you note, and helped to hasten enforcement of the Production Code.
And I'm not sure that depictions were "eliminated entirely" during the time the Production Code was in force. Filmmakers just got very sly and creative in their suggestions of sex and drug use, and savvy viewers then and now picked them up.
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History is hard to know, because of all the hired bull$hit. - Hunter S. Thompson
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rtw416
10 years ago
She was doing smack for sure....all the signs of opioid dependence were done well-3 days without coke and you're fine,back to normal-physically.Mentally takes awhile longer to adjust NOT going through the routine.
3 days without opiates is just the begining if you've had a long term habit.The physical withdrawl gets progressively worse,3rd day is usually the peek of nausea/flu like symptoms.Then expect at least a week of little to no sleep.Jumping out the window is not a surprise.
Unfortunatly Im speaking from first hand observation of a loved one.All this debate about which drug she was on is sad-addiction is addiction and she fell hard for hers.In recovery you are told that there are three outcomes to expect-DEATH,PRISON or become INSTITUTIONALIZED.
This is a great film that has held up all these years later
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DorianGray502
9 years ago
___I agree with RTW, this is a great film. Dvorak is amazing, Blondell is good, Davis not much here. It should be screened more often. Most people today won't even sit through an old B&W film like this today, a film that really has a hard hitting story.
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