Strange Interlude

Norma Shearer, still carrying torch for handsome Gordon, who died in WW1, marries another guy on the rebound, only to find that insanity runs in his family and she can't have children with him (but how will she ever be the mother of a son as handsome as dear, dead Gordon?), and she can't leave him because the shock would certainly send him over the edge into terminal wacked-out nuttiness. What to do? Gimmick here is that, along with the spoken dialogue, we share the inner thoughts of the characters -- presented as V.O. while the actors stand around mute, making faces as if somebody just broke wind on the set. Did anyone watch this with a straight face in 1932? Film goes on long enough that the sanity of the audience is tested much more severely than that of Shearer's husband, but was reportedly 5 or 6 hours in theatrical production. (Any cries of "Author! Author!" at that premiere came, no doubt, from a lynch mob.) It's an MGM, so of course the cast is first-rate, but is it their fault the act is a louse?