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Husbands and wives, a case study to pull Merry Old England into modernity. "Am I wrong to read between the lines?" Back in London from Ceylon at election time, the lady (Diana Wynyard) is done with marriage but the abusive spouse (Colin Clive) is not done with her. She keeps things platonic with the young suitor (Frank Lawton), the upper-crust family home is a sanctuary for only so long, the cad enters in a succession of jump cuts reminiscent of the Creature's introduction in Frankenstein. "A plain divorce causes enough scandal. This would be meat for a nine-day wonder." Galsworthy by way of R.C. Sherriff, James Whale on the end of The Forsyte Saga with a light touch for systemic cruelties. (Much of the humor flows from Mrs. Patrick Campbell as a dauntless aunt, the Edwardian diva ascends a grand staircase holding a candle and ponders a certain pang: "I don't know whether it's flatulence or the hand of God.") Friends in a stalled car at night supply the compromising position, catnip for the private detective (E.E. Clive) with pince-nez and bogus mustache. Hollywood's British colony (Reginald Denny and C. Aubrey Smith and Henry Stephenson...) on hand for the strain of neurotic menace under genteel imperial surfaces. "It makes one wonder if anything is really quite clean." Courtroom proceedings find Lionel Atwill and Alan Mowbray as opposing barristers, marital rape somehow surviving Production Code censorship, and camera movements and shifting angles expanded by Hitchcock in The Paradine Case. "You can always find an audience to watch suffering," still the heroine endures to find love on her own terms. McCarey in The Awful Truth takes a screwball tack at the situation. With Jane Wyatt, Kathleen Howard, Gilbert Emery, Robert Greig, Tempe Pigott, and Snub Pollard. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |