Norma Shearer is a delight in this film, which was the last of her pre-Code appearances. She gives a very natural, charming performance in scenes that call for tenderness, temptation, flirtation, and playfulness, including those with the two leading men (Robert Montgomery and Herbert Marshall), her aunt-in-law (theater legend Mrs. Patrick Campbell), and her adorable daughter (Marilyn Spinner). She's helped considerably by the script which has a lot of life to it, something evident from the beginning, when we see Marshall in a giant 'Insect Man' costume and Shearer in a revealing 'Lady Sky bug' number, get ups designed by Adrian for a "World of the Future" ball. The story degenerates into a bit of a soap opera in its second half, but it had scored enough points with me early on that I didn't mind too much.
One thing that's great about it is its frankness with the sexuality of Shearer's character. From the dialogue, it's clear she's had premarital sex with men before meeting Marshall's character, and has sex with him too. She's content to leave it at a fling, but he wants marriage, a role reversal from what we'd traditionally see. At the same time, she's not portrayed as a tramp, on the contrary, she's sweet, funny, honest, and full of life. When they marry, though, the expectation is that she'll "settle down," which she jokingly agrees to ("From now on, a ring in the nose and a beating every Saturday night, please"). Fast forward five years, and tension comes in the form of Montgomery's character, a friend from her single days who meets her while her husband is travelling, and over drinks makes a pass at her. She rebukes him, but the story makes the newspapers, and between that, Montgomery's persistence, and Marshall judging her, she's torn between the two men from then on.
As I mentioned, it spirals a bit, but watching Shearer deal with the emotions of the character made the film for me. In one fine scene, Marshall throws her past up into her face while suspecting her of adultery, thinking of how she "didn't stop with a kiss" back in the day, calling to mind the double standard of the period. That's a little irritating, but this was the reality in 1934, and Shearer is given the power of choice, without being condemned. Eyebrows are raised by the other characters, but if she goes off with Montgomery's character they and the audience will know it's due to the thrill having faded from her marriage, and that she will survive. As she puts it, "No man is gonna let me or not let me do anything ever again."
The film drew the ire of the Father Daniel Lord, one of the authors of the Production Code, who condemned Shearer for taking the role of a "loose and immoral woman" and her husband Irving Thalberg for casting her in films like these, which in turn enraged Thalberg. Lord (and Joseph Breen's) position were more about keeping women in their place, since the behavior of Marshall's character is the same but there were no comments about a "loose and immoral man." They would soon put the shackles of the Production Code on Hollywood, which makes seeing this last Shearer film before that happened, at a time when she was quite good as an actor, special for me.
