I never thought Fritz Kreisler's dignified and melancholic Caprice Viennois could be used to express carefree jauntiness but it's managed in this film - it expresses more in seconds than the multitude of words spoken. And all the Words in here are enunciated with capitals and a fervency usually
er unheard of outside of silent films
Listless young woman Betty Stockfeld married to manic old before his time hypochondriac Allan Jeayes falls for a dashing doctor past his prime Owen Nares on a foreign cruise, the drama transfers two years later to London where the hypochondriac's enigmatic and hardly impassive footman with a past George Curzon gets into the picture. These four main characters hammed it up for all they were worth which together with decent production values and nice photography gave me an enjoyable if predictable melodrama. I nearly always like simple and hoary films like this, like when the font's in bold it can be easier to remember. Favourite bits: Curzon's mad shadow-heightened interlude at the camera to a cringing Jeayes; the "inhuman devil" Jeayes' occasional lapses into a Roderick Femm soundalike; Nares' black-hole stiff seriousness at all times – what a barrel of laughs he would be for a romance-starved woman! For a quota quickie all wonderful stuff! The morally dubious ending was just the icing on the cake. One of the cherubic Aubrey Mathers first films.
I liked it - it creaks badly so it won't be to everyone's taste of course, but if nothing else I notice one of the previous commenters was unusually almost charitable towards it, so maybe it really must be rather good.
Listless young woman Betty Stockfeld married to manic old before his time hypochondriac Allan Jeayes falls for a dashing doctor past his prime Owen Nares on a foreign cruise, the drama transfers two years later to London where the hypochondriac's enigmatic and hardly impassive footman with a past George Curzon gets into the picture. These four main characters hammed it up for all they were worth which together with decent production values and nice photography gave me an enjoyable if predictable melodrama. I nearly always like simple and hoary films like this, like when the font's in bold it can be easier to remember. Favourite bits: Curzon's mad shadow-heightened interlude at the camera to a cringing Jeayes; the "inhuman devil" Jeayes' occasional lapses into a Roderick Femm soundalike; Nares' black-hole stiff seriousness at all times – what a barrel of laughs he would be for a romance-starved woman! For a quota quickie all wonderful stuff! The morally dubious ending was just the icing on the cake. One of the cherubic Aubrey Mathers first films.
I liked it - it creaks badly so it won't be to everyone's taste of course, but if nothing else I notice one of the previous commenters was unusually almost charitable towards it, so maybe it really must be rather good.