An American drama directed by George Cukor, starring John Barrymore, Billie Burke and Katharine Hepburn.
A man is released from a mental institution to find that his wife has divorced him and is marrying another man. His daughter calls off her engagement to take care of her father because there is insanity "in her blood".
Boring, trite, simplistic, dated, generally not good. The simple plot had nothing to hold my attention and the shallow characters could not do so either. This was filmed in RCA Photophone, an early system of adding sound to films. It sounded terrible, but looked alright. I noticed good exposure, contrast and detail until the camera panned. During a pan, everything got all glitchy and choppy. I'm including an accurate image from the version I watched so you can see the detail. Check out the crisp highlights on the chairs and the man's hair in the center. The daughter abandoning her engagement because of her father's insanity goes along with the eugenics policies of the time. It was considered bad for people with even family histories of mental or physical illness to reproduce. Some were even given forced sterilization. Hitler picked up this idea AFTER America, but also after ancient Greece and most of Europe. I really had trouble watching this film, so I rate it bad. You should probably avoid it.
An American drama directed by George Cukor, starring Joan Crawford.
A woman in New York has friends at a clothing store and a husband. She learns from her friends that her husband is cheating on her. She gets a divorce and moves to a lesbian farm in Reno for a little while. When she moves back to New York, she hears juicy gossip about the homewrecker who married her husband.
This was pretty boring, except for the ending. Using an entirely female cast with a plot that involves marriage and affairs was a unique idea. The line that describes the film best is spoken at 2 hours and 12 minutes: "There's a name for you ladies, but it isn't used in high society... ...outside of a kennel". I was watching the whole time thinking that this should have been called The Bitches and here comes a character in the film to put my thought into the perfect words. The women stab backs and gossip through 2 hours in black and white video. In the middle, there is a color scene of an interminable fashion show. My biggest disappointment about this film was no female anatomy points! Overall, you're better off just reading the line of dialogue and skipping the movie. I rate it poor.
