Dortoir de jeunes filles

This romance from 20th Century Fox and director Irving Cummings has Dr. Stephen Dominick (Herbert Marshall) teaching at an exclusive girls' school. He runs into trouble when both fellow teacher Professor Anna Mathe (Ruth Chatterton) and student Marie Claudel (Simone Simon) fall in love with him.

I'm not quite sure why the women in this film fall so hard for Marshall, who remains largely stone-faced and monotone throughout. Maybe it's that British stiff-upper-lip poise. Chatterton is wasted in an underwritten role. Simone Simon, making her American movie debut with much attendant ballyhoo, is the main focus of the filmmakers, with many, many lingering closeups of her face filling the screen. The result is the kind of romance that, if one swapped out the musical score and replaced it with one more menacing, would easily be believable as a horror film, as Simone's unblinking stare beaming from her baby-doll face is a little disturbing. I watched this for Tyrone Power in one of his earliest roles, a very short bit at the end. Character actor John Qualen is the most memorable as a kindly groundskeeper, sporting long white hair and a droopy mustache despite only being in his mid-30s at the time.