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Monday, January 8, 2024

CYNARA (1932)

Fast transfer of the successful B’way play sees rising Barrister Ronald Colman reluctantly fall into an affair with working-class shop girl Phyllis Barry when wife Kay Francis leaves him on his own to accompany her ditzy, romantically entangled sister on a breakup trip to Venice.  Egged on by old ‘Honorable’ family friend Henry Stevenson (sole holdover from the B’way production), Colman’s just too damn polite to keep his pants on.  Instead, as if watching his actions helplessly from the side, finds his casual affair turning serious, then tragic.  And, once it’s over, too much the gentleman to defend himself against a morals charge.  Social scandal!  Separation!  Club & country left behind.  Marriage & promising career ruined.  Will Francis ever forgive him?  All terribly dated now . . . or is it?  FATAL ATTRACTION really so different?  Only here played out with breathtaking levels of misogyny.  Again, really so different?  (And that’s with Frances Marion adapting R. Gore Brown’s playscript.)  Phyllis Barry and her partying roommate incredibly unsympathetic as presented.  While anyone but Colman would seem a complete heel in his role.  All told, a fascinating and thoroughly depressing peek at sexual mores past.  King Vidor, on his second film for Sam Goldwyn, directs in a smooth corporate style not much like him, effective if faceless, with superb assists from art director Richard Day and cinematographer Ray June.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  Between this and THE STRANGER’S RETURN/’33, his next marital infidelity pic, Vidor would go thru a second divorce.  Perhaps that accounts for some of the startling change from the judgmental CYNARA to STRANGER’S remarkably blame-free attitude toward love and fidelity.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2020/06/the-strangers-return-1933.html

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