Plot Intro
Jerry (Norma Shearer) and Ted (Chester Morris) are head-over-heels in love with each other and get married. But trouble in paradise arises when Jerry later meets a woman with whom Ted had a brief affair. Filled with jealous rage, Jerry then goes on a big night out with one of Ted’s male friends while Ted is away. When she tells him, it leads to marriage-destroying consequences.
This must have been a very timely movie on its release in April 1930. It tackles the frivolities, the childishness and the glamour of the New York in-crowd in a similar way to The Great Gatsby, mere months after the Wall Street Crash of 1929 sent these very people into a spiral of financial ruin. The Divorcee certainly puts a lot of emphasis on how much fun these people are having whilst doing some rather bizarre activities. One of the most eccentric members of the group dresses up as a stereotypical Italian peasant with a giant accordion, and this is hilarious fun for everyone (apparently).
Where the film fails quite significantly is that the story doesn’t have the emotional punch it might have had in days of yore. Most of the plot’s suspense depends on the idea that divorce is a shameful and embarrassing thing that must be rectified by the two divorcees reconciling. The Divorcee does well to point out the hypocrisy in both Ted and Jerry. Both are hurt by the other’s flirtations with other people, and both want retribution against the other when actually they could talk it out, perhaps after two to three months of self-isolation together. But a modern take on the film would be that they’re not meant for each other, and their relationship has more of the torridness of Romeo and Juliet than the steadiness of Richard and Judy. So their eventual reconciliation feels contrived and thrown in just to provide a happy ending for the audiences.
Perhaps this is the intention, perhaps the movie is tackling the superficiality of wealthy, high-class relationships. But the plot was so underdone and lacking in consequence that I found it hard to care what happens.
To her credit, Norma Shearer doesn’t shy away from displaying the vindictiveness of Jerry. In the scenes where she has taken Ted’s friend with, I presume, the intention to seduce him, it shows her face in a harsh and solemn light in stark contrast to the smiley, bubbly Jerry we have seen up until then. From what I have read, this is a very quintessential Shearer role- feisty, exuberant, fun, and, above all, sexy. Like the previous year’s Best Actress winner, Mark Pickford, she was usually associated with those razor-sharp ingenue personas in contrast to the virginal demureness of Janet Gaynor. That is, until after the Hayes Code came into practice when she took on more motherly, noble roles.
Shearer had an extremely successful career. Immensely driven and ambitious, she used Greta Garbo as a model for her acting persona, as she realised that Garbo had cultivated a specific but desirable niche. She married Irving Thalberg (who was essentially her boss at the time), one of the creators of MGM studios who died before he turned 40 in 1936. Although she had to fight for it, Shearer managed to inherit many of the profits from other MGM productions which helped to retain her career. This led to other actresses showing resentment, notably Joan Crawford during the making of The Women in 1939, a great example of Shearer’s post-Code roles. Crawford allegedly once said “How can I compete with Norma when she’s sleeping with the boss?”
Shearer took early retirement in 1942 and moved away from the Hollywood social scene. This led to her fame declining and she’s sadly a bit of a forgotten name despite her huge success. She married again to Martin Arrouge, a former ski instructor and they remained together until she died in 1983.
Highlight
Norma Shearer’s acting during the scenes in which she plots to cheat on Ted. She does a complete turn around from bubbly and breezy to plotting and self-hating. It’s pretty effective.
Lowlight
The quick, contrived ending is a disappointment.
Marks
3/10
There’s not much I can add to the above, really - except I have slightly contrasting opinions to Paul on the success of the film’s controversial moments. While I agree that it doesn’t read as clearly by today’s far more liberal society, I think this - together with the similarly plotted The Women - make a case for Hollywood writers desperately trying to push the boundaries to more relevant stories.
Allow me to make a digression. In the weird and wonderful global drag scene, if you go to see a drag queen perform at a bar, you can expect to hear jokes that cut right to the knuckle, and could never be aired in a less underground space. Meanwhile on RuPaul’s Drag Race, we still see a fun and inventive form of drag, but it’s much more sanitised for the television authorities’ approval.
It feels similar here. If the film-makers were making The Divorcee in a safer, more underground spot, I wonder how different this would have been. We see an unhappy couple, openly cheating on each other. We see the difference between the man and woman in the case - the man feels vindicated in cheating and utterly disgusted by his wife cheating. We see the woman go into her adultery with eyes wide open. There’s a lot here that speaks of screenwriters and directors trying to push the boat out storytelling, and get to the heart of something real. That’s the underground drag scene bit.
The RuPaul’s Drag Race bit is how they’ve managed to get this film approved. They’ve wrapped this story up in the gaiety of rich Bright Young Things, having games and dancing and playing the piano. They’ve tacked on an astonishingly false happy ending which involves the couple reuniting - one can almost see a Hollywood Producer saying ‘oh alright they can divorce - as long as they get back together.’ It’s the same with Shearer’s later picture The Women which seems to really be about something very different to what the plot indicates. There’s a darkness which the writer is pushing for that is being appropriately sanitised by the plot. And that undercurrent for me, kept it from descending into mawkish sentiment.
Norma Shearer, as Paul says, is a bit of a lost name. She does seem to play the same sort of character, and her delivery of it is excellent. Quick, startling movements and a broad smile sum her up for me, but it’s nice to see her fully embrace some darker moments in this, including when she’s heading home with a man who isn’t her husband and has the expression of a waiting cobra. Ultimately this piece does feel fairly throwaway but she commits to it and although she and her fellow castmates still have the overacting silent film style coursing through their performances, she’s still entertaining in what she does.
An interesting film - but definitely a time capsule. You couldn’t make this again!
Highlight
The scene with a car crash is so obviously done in a studio with moving backgrounds that it made me cackle delightedly. Not intentional, but hilarious.
Lowlight
The tacked on ending, despite being clearly mandatory, is irritating.
Marks
4/10
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