This early talkie is quite the surprise, not for its typical society story of flaming youth, the smart set and the trauma that infidelity and divorce can bring, but for the technical achievements it has considering how early in the sound era it came. A polo game opens the film rather impressively, with the flashy Norma Shearer making her entrance, vowing to beat the pants off her own father, Lewis Stone. She'll want to do more than that when she walks into a room and finds him kissing an old family friend (Helene Millard), the affair apparently having gone on for more than a year which lead her mother (Belle Bennett) to attempt suicide.
No sooner has she gotten over the shock of that, she's back in her own pool of flaming youth friends, showing off her diving skills on the shores of Lake Michigan at a flashy resort. Instantly entranced by the dark haired beauty, shameless Robert Montgomery dives in fully clothed after her and meets her as she rises to the surfae with a kiss. Then, he introduces himself, and she responds as any young woman would to a stranger kissing her with a laugh. They're soon attached, but she's got mom to look after. A twist of fate has them tied together, but should the sins of the parents be held against the children?
At just over an hour long, this is quite an enjoyable early MGM talkie drama with light comedy making some of the creaks and soundtrack noise more tolerable. The cast is able to move around a bit more which are like filmed stage plays with non-moving camera and pauses in dialog. Just a decade later, Shearer would play a character in her mother's shoes, but here, she is much more multi-dimensional than her Mary Haines character in "The Women" seemed, going from happiness to sadness to anger easily thanks to a better than average script and good direction. Stone, who would seem like a big block of wood in many of his films, is surprisingly lively in this, and Montgomery in an early film effortlessly goes from clowinng lothario to serious lover with convincing reality. The finale however is ridiculously stupid, removing any brains that the two young leads had earlier on. A nice surprise, however, from a year when it was difficult to judge films fairly simply based on technical aspects.
No sooner has she gotten over the shock of that, she's back in her own pool of flaming youth friends, showing off her diving skills on the shores of Lake Michigan at a flashy resort. Instantly entranced by the dark haired beauty, shameless Robert Montgomery dives in fully clothed after her and meets her as she rises to the surfae with a kiss. Then, he introduces himself, and she responds as any young woman would to a stranger kissing her with a laugh. They're soon attached, but she's got mom to look after. A twist of fate has them tied together, but should the sins of the parents be held against the children?
At just over an hour long, this is quite an enjoyable early MGM talkie drama with light comedy making some of the creaks and soundtrack noise more tolerable. The cast is able to move around a bit more which are like filmed stage plays with non-moving camera and pauses in dialog. Just a decade later, Shearer would play a character in her mother's shoes, but here, she is much more multi-dimensional than her Mary Haines character in "The Women" seemed, going from happiness to sadness to anger easily thanks to a better than average script and good direction. Stone, who would seem like a big block of wood in many of his films, is surprisingly lively in this, and Montgomery in an early film effortlessly goes from clowinng lothario to serious lover with convincing reality. The finale however is ridiculously stupid, removing any brains that the two young leads had earlier on. A nice surprise, however, from a year when it was difficult to judge films fairly simply based on technical aspects.