New Morals for Old

Parents will have a tough time getting through New Morals for Old without staining a Kleenex or two with tears. The entire point of the film is that children never listen to their parents, even though their lessons are wise and worthy, and after they've seen a bit of life, they realize that their parents were right all along. If you hate your parents and don't want to eventually eat crow, you're not going to want to watch Robert Young and Margaret Perry do it in the movie. Watch something else tonight.

Margaret Perry is absolutely adorable, and even though she falls in love with a married man, David Newell, and becomes his mistress in a love nest, you can't help but love her. This was her first of two total films, and I have no idea why she didn't rocket to stardom. Not only is she cute to look at, but she has talent! In the movie, she really does feel bad about causing a rift in her family. She collapses in tears in her father Lewis Stone's lap when she tells him how she's living. Mother Laura Hope Crews won't receive David in the house and has a very strained relationship with her daughter forever after. Meanwhile, playboy Robert Young refuses to settle down and get a respectable job. He travels to Paris to become an artist and shacks up with the morally loose Myrna Loy.

If you like the message, this movie is worth watching. The acting is very good, and there are some pre-Code aspects that are sure to evoke a giggle. When Robert studies art, he attends the classic class to draw nudes, and since this movie was made in 1932, the model is shown. Myrna's ten minutes on the screen are also very raunchy, and the script makes no secret to her type of relationship with Bob.

Though hardly an example of pre-Code films at their raciest, the matter-of-fact treatment of looser sexual mores in this family drama may reveal more about its times than a more exploitative film would. A few years later Lewis Stone, the father here, would play the father of the most straightlaced and retrograde family in movie history (Andy Hardy's); yet here he is shown as accepting the idea that his son would go off to Paris to be an artist (and be shown breakfasting the next morning with his female neighbor, in pajamas) and that his daughter would have an affair with a married man, musing to his wife that they just have to get used to the different morals of different times. No masterpiece, but a sweet and enjoyable film that may remind you of James Ivory's Mr. and Mrs. Bridge.

The generation gap in 1932.Two retired people see their children (a boy and a girl) turn their back on mom's nice rice pudding and want to marry a divorcée (the girl) and to go and study art in Paris (the boy).

All in all ,neither the obsolete precepts of the old nor the modern way of life of the young are satisfying .Travel broadens the mind ,for sure,but when your talent is mediocre ,the best of art professors cannot do anything for you ,even if he teaches (or is supposed to) in French.And it's almost probable that the two rebels will become their parents without a sound.The last pictures glorify Family with a capital F.

Phyl and her brother Ralph's bedroom play is so 30s flirty;) The Paris goodbye kiss is so smoldering hot. Tennessee Williams would love this so forbidden sexiness. The screenplay was based on the play "After All" by John Van Druten, author of "I Am A Camera" which was the basis of the musical "Cabaret". (I wonder what was left on the editing room floor.) What happened with Myra? There so many unanswered questions raised that it is not truly as predictable as it seems. All in all I consider it more of naughty tease. I was glad I could fast forward what was most totally predictable...and enjoy the fun of the queerness of it "After All".

Boring old creaker about two terrible children (Robert Young, Margaret Perry) breaking their elderly parents' hearts. At least that's how I interpreted it. The point is a little muddled as it seems to be saying the younger generation has loose morals but the older is stuffy and old-fashioned. That the younger will eventually become the older and "rinse, lather, repeat" is the ultimate point, I suppose. Only worth seeing for early work by Young and Myrna Loy, as well as to see Judge Hardy with a son who doesn't listen to a word he says. Despite being pre-Code and having somewhat risqué subject manner, there's nothing here to get worked up over.