This is perhaps the greatest social problem and not just of our own age, but men have always been beating up their wives, and it's not until the last hundred years or so that the wives have been able to do something about it, like getting a divorce. We don't hear much about abused wives in earlier centuries, while John Galsworthy's "The Man of Property" could be the first one to actually pinpoint the problem. There are three wives here, actually four, who all are grossly mishandled by their husbands on a rising gradient for the worse, until one of them actually is beaten to death, and of course he didn't mean to do it. It just happened that way. Two of the husbands get violent and abusive by drinking, and they always keep promising not to do it again, while they always keep doing it again. Finally one of them stops drinking, and there is hope, while the greatest hope is for the one who actually persists on getting a divorce and obviously triumphs - we never learn what happened to that husband, not to the other husband who beat his wife to death. The dramaturgy here is great, it starts slowly to gain momentum half way, and then the drama becomes indispensable, and you will stick to it to the end. Karen Grassle as the lawyer's wife is the great character here with her son as a witness saying nothing until it is over, but all the actors are excellent.
