★ 6 / 10
“What you feel for me is not love
CinemaSerf
“What you feel for me is not love, it’s the call of a gorilla to it’s mate.” Nobody can ever say that pre-code plots weren’t racy enough, and this shows Norma…
“What you feel for me is not love, it’s the call of a gorilla to it’s mate.” Nobody can ever say that pre-code plots weren’t racy enough, and this shows Norma Shearer, Chester Morris and Robert Montgomery’s characters at their most fickle. “Jerry” (Shearer) has been married to “Ted” (Morris) for a while now, but he is a bit of a philanderer. Meantime, another admirer “Paul” (Conrad Nagel) is living in a rather guilt-ridden marriage with “Dorothy” (Judith Wood) whom he managed to injure in a car accident when he was as plastered on the inside as she ended up all over the road. Finally fed up with her husband’s peccadilloes, she has one too many with “Don” (Robert Montgomery) and then, rather optimistically as it turns out, confesses to her hypocrite of an husband who demands a divorce. The question is, though, whilst “Don” has set his cap firmly at her and she is making the most of her new-found independence, does she really love him back, or is it still her (now ex) husband she loves? It’s borderline sarcastic at times this - which I liked, and there’s a good dose of chemistry now and again but I found the story all just a bit too contrived. Shearer has neither the lines to sink her teeth into nor a solid consistency to her part from a wobbly plot that suggest way more than it actually delivers. I thought the limited Morris played his alcoholic scenes well; Montgomery presents with an understated but quite powerful sexiness and Nagel packed quite a lot into his occasionally quite expressive glances, but this all lacked a certain cohesion. Along the way, it touches on an whole range of quite testy topics, but not quite with the gusto I would have liked and ultimately these folks all come across as fairly shallow and largely fit for each other - with the exception of the veiled Wood who might actually be the only decent one amongst them! It’s quite theatrically performed and filmed which hasn’t helped it almost a century later, but it’s worth a watch.
★ 8 / 10
"An overtone of sarcasm"
Steffi_P
The dramas of the early sound era were often awkward, phoney-looking things. A lot of this has to do with the acting. Most actors were of course experienced in…
The dramas of the early sound era were often awkward, phoney-looking things. A lot of this has to do with the acting. Most actors were of course experienced in silent cinema, but a lot of players with stage experience had also been brought in as was deemed appropriate for "talkies". Silent screen acting tended to be over-the-top so that meaning could be expressed without words, and stage acting also tended to be over-the-top so that meaning could be expressed to people sitting in the back row. But this excessive style didn't really work in the more authentic setting of sound cinema. Of course, movie people weren't stupid; they were aware of what did and didn't work and the industry adapted quicker than is sometimes thought.And of course, there were some actors and actresses who simply seemed to get the hang of it straight away. Norma Shearer was among a small number who survived the transition from silents to talkies with her career completely intact. One thing Shearer had was a remarkable presence – she's able to project herself with just a simple gesture or pose, and in The Divorcée she's often standing with her shoulders slightly forward in understated aggression. And within this context she is able to give a restrained performance, conveying a great deal but with a degree of credibility that makes the drama seem more believable. Shearer deservedly won the Academy Award for her work here. Compare her to previous year's winner Mary Pickford in Coquette, a slice of ham from a bygone era, and you can see how much things have changed.Let's also take a look at the director Robert Z. Leonard. He's not too well remembered these days because he isn't deemed an auteur, but at the time he was among the forefront of Hollywood professionals. Two things in particular are worth noting about his style in The Divorcée. First is that he uses a lot of camera movement to really engage us in a scene (who says early sound films were static?), often using a noteworthy pan as a character appears. Secondly, he gives us an awful lot of the interplay between characters in simple wordless glances between them, for example the jealous look of Conrad Nagel when Shearer and Chester Morris announce their betrothal, or later a silent, spiteful exchange between Shearer and Mary Doran. There was a temptation for talkie directors to shoot things before the assembled actors as if for a stage play, but here Leonard is making subtle close-ups that cut across the action, and in so doing giving depth to the story outside of the dialogue.This picture is now often classified as a "pre-code" movie for its depiction of Shearer's promiscuity after she becomes the titular divorcée, although even by the standards of the day it's pretty tame. However, thanks to its fluid direction and naturalistic acting, it is nevertheless a movie that seems a few steps ahead of its time, and points towards the increasingly sophisticated sound cinema of the 1930s.
78%
TOMATOMETER
· 9 reviews
62%
AUDIENCE
· 500 ratings
6.6/10
4.2K
