This review may contain spoilers. When Bob’s mistress Helen (Helene Millard) shows up at the couple’s house (!) one morning Kitty has had enough and divorces Bob. She takes the children and moves to Paris where she gets nice clothes and starts moving in high class social…
“This is more like a French farce every minute.”
Display Your Jewels
Opens with Norma Shearer as a no makeup mommy shushing her little rascals and doting on her hard-working husband.
While not a great film, it certainly is a good one and more than just another time-passer. Those seem to be impromptu and authentic, and one wonders if they didn't happen that way on the set and the director decided to keep them instead of reshooting scenes. I guess it's not a movie to recommend per se, but I have to admit I was in the mood to enjoy it last night, especially Marie Dressler's overacting.
I would've considered this fantastic if it hadn't been for the last 10 seconds, really.
Let US be gay? Bouccicault, while a group is singing around Kitty at the piano, "Towney, is that you making that particularly bad noise?" Towney Townley, "No.
Oddly, during this time, La Rocque did not see Shearer or his two kids as Shearer took them to Paris.
Marie Dressler is a rich society lady and she has invited a new and improved Norma to come to her house for the weekend--ostensibly to help Marie break up a budding romance between her daughter and La Rocque! She and Kitty dominate most of the scenes they are in together.
Her strange, yet appealing posturing and "affair with the camera" are evident throughout -- and she hits every emotional note, genuinely and on target. Unbeknownst to him, she is the same ex-wife he'd neglected, now transformed into a fashionable socialite.A housewife divorces her self-centered husband. Her Pre-Code persona brings a very specific brand to the table, and it’s made up of two parts.
Neither tells anyone that they were married but it's obvious that her ex- wants the new and improved Norma back!
The film has much humor - biting in places. They give a sense of reality as something that happens among people in regular life, but that one seldom sees in scripted movies. As a guest of the eccentric globe-trotting Marie Dressler -- Shearer mixes with an odd assortment of lovelorn types, including her long-lost husband.
This is so obvious as to be nagging and distracting from any sincerity on his part. The setting for all of this is in the upper crust of society. The rest of the cast are fine
The best part of the film is the witty and cynical comedy in exchanges between Kitty and others, especially Bouccy and Towney. Her husband Bob (Rod La Rocque) is a dull putz who’s lost interest in her romantically.
I wanted to kiss the right one all through dinner, especially with the salad." Whitman - 1st Butler, "Oh, Perkins.