Programme notes CH 04 — The Matinee
The Divorcee
A wife who finds out about her husband's affair decides that what is allowed to him is allowed to her.
Norma Shearer won her Oscar for this, and MGM sold it on the promise of a woman settling a score. It keeps the promise. Jerry learns that Ted has been unfaithful, hears that it meant nothing, and answers in kind — with his best friend, the same night he leaves town. The film was made four years before the Production Code was enforced, and it shows in what nobody is punished for. Watch Shearer when Ted explains himself: she listens all the way to the end of his excuse, and only then does her face decide. Robert Montgomery is the friend, nearly too charming to be guilty.
Credits — follow anyone
- Directed by
- Robert Z. Leonard
- Photographed by
- Norbert Brodine
Every name is a door — each opens onto everything else that person made in the network.
The thread · every thread
1930, before the Code: two women whose pasts are the plot, in films that decline to punish them for it. MGM gives Norma Shearer the gowns and the speech; Columbia gives Stanwyck a studio couch and lets her keep quiet.
Norma Shearer and Robert Z. Leonard twice in 1930, both times on the morning after a marriage. In one she pays for leaving; in the other she comes back three years later better dressed and holding all the cards.
MGM, 1930, the same question twice: what does a wife do when her husband strays? Norma Shearer answers it in kind and calls it equality; Kay Johnson answers it in costume and calls it Madam Satan. Both films side with the wife, and neither quite lets her off.