The Divorcee (1930)

“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.