1h 50min. // Ted, Jerry, Paul, and Dorothy whirl through Manhattan’s bright lights and smoky parties, the very picture of the smart set at the dawn of the 1930s. Jerry’s choice to marry the charming but complacent Ted shatters Paul, whose long-simmering love for her has always remained just below the surface. In a haze of heartbreak and liquor, Paul gets behind the wheel and crashes, leaving the gentle Dorothy permanently disfigured and the group’s carefree camaraderie in ruins.
As guilt, resentment, and desire tighten their grip, Jerry discovers that Ted’s notion of marital fidelity is strictly one-sided. When she dares to claim the same freedom he’s taken for granted, their marriage erupts into a battle over double standards and what a “modern” wife is allowed to feel and do. The film traces Jerry’s defiant journey through scandal, separation, and self-discovery, as she tests the boundaries of love and respectability in a society eager to punish a woman for breaking the rules men wrote for themselves.
Amid glittering dinner parties and shadowy hotel rooms, the friends’ intertwined romances curdle into painful reckonings. Paul’s lingering devotion, Dorothy’s quiet suffering, and Ted’s wounded pride all circle around Jerry’s refusal to be the wronged, docile wife. The story becomes a sharp pre-Code exploration of passion, hypocrisy, and the price a woman pays for insisting that her heart—and her mistakes—count just as much as any man’s.
Directed by: Robert Z. Leonard
Writing Credits: John Meehan, Nick Grinde, Zelda Sears
Starring: Norma Shearer, George Irving, Robert Montgomery, Florence Eldridge, Chester Morris
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Awards:
WON. Academy Award for Best Actress 1931. Best Actress in a Leading Role. Norma Shearer.
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