Besos al pasar

The pre-Code talkies included many movies in which women led an independent life and refused to submit to the sexual double standard. This one tries to be bold but ends up in a lot of tortuous moral tangles that not only negate the vaunted sexual freedom but make no sense.

The starring free spirit is Norma Shearer, that triumph of hard work (and being married to the boss) over beauty and talent. Though she wears the divine gowns of Adrian, Shearer has no class of her own. Coy, affected, arch, she gives a performance that is a patchwork of tricks and gestures. There's the head flung back, fingers fluttering at her forehead; the hands clasped at one side of her waist while she leans against a door frame; the high-pitched stuttering mirthless laugh (as Rebecca West put it, "out of an all-star revival of Sheridan").

Hardest of all to take is Neil Hamilton as Shearer's Great Love. True, he didn't write the ridiculous dialogue, but he hardly overrides it, with his impersonal, stuffy delivery and bunched-up, prissy features and little mustache.

In the scene in which Shearer encounters Robert Montgomery after a two-year absence, look out for Ray Milland, standing on the right of a row of admirers. Now, he is REALLY cute! But Norma has no eyes for him, only for some slimy type who speaks broken English. Some girls just DON'T want to have fun!