The British cinema did not make many colour films in the thirties and forties, and the ones they did make often seemed ill-chosen. At least the Americans tended to reserve Technicolor for their more spectacular movies. I have never, for example, really understood why David Lean chose to make that dull domestic drama "This Happy Breed" in colour, and "The Divorce of Lady X"- a very early example of British Technicolor- is another which would have worked just as well in black-and-white.
Leslie Steele, a young socialite attending a charity ball at a London hotel, has to stay overnight because of a particularly bad "pea-souper" fog. As there are no rooms available, she is forced to share a suite with Everard Logan, a handsome young barrister specialising in divorce cases. Leslie is single, but a misunderstanding makes Logan believe that she is married, and she plays along with this misapprehension. Later Logan is approached by an old school friend, Lord Mere, who asks him to represent him in a divorce suit against his wife whom he suspects of adultery. Logan has never met Lady Mere, who happens to have been another guest at the same party, and a further series of misunderstandings leaves Logan convinced firstly that Lady Mere was the woman who spent the night in his suite and secondly that he himself is the man whom Lord Mere suspects of being his wife's lover. To complicate matters further, he is starting to fall in love with Leslie, even though he believes her to be another man's wife. Despite all these complications, he agrees to take on the case.
This was a remake of another film, "Counsel's Opinion", made only five years earlier by the same company, London Films. (Binnie Barnes, who plays Lady Mere here, appeared as Leslie in the earlier film). I have never seen "Counsel's Opinion", but the fact that it was remade so soon afterwards, in the then very expensive medium of Technicolor, suggests that the story was a popular one in the thirties. Today, however, it is difficult to understand why. To start with, it is obvious that the scriptwriters had very little legal knowledge. This becomes clear when Logan, in the middle of cross-examining a witness, suddenly launches into a lengthy tirade against modern women, only dubiously relevant to the subject of his cross-examination, without incurring the immediate severe rebuke from the Judge which would be the reward of any barrister who tried such tactics in real life. As a barrister, Logan would not have been permitted to receive instructions direct from his client rather than via a solicitor. And, most importantly, you don't need to know much about legal etiquette to realise that the idea of a lawyer prosecuting a case in which he himself might be named as a co-respondent is quite absurd.
These legal howlers might have been forgivable if the film had been made as a zany farce- there is, after all, something farcical about the idea of a lawyer ending up suing himself through a series of misunderstandings- but in a romantic comedy set in the world of the law they are simply embarrassing. They are not, however, the only reason why the story just does not work today. The best thing about the film is the lovely Merle Oberon. (Her husband, Alexander Korda, acted as producer). Laurence Olivier, however, seems strangely miscast. Now I have never been an adherent of that school of thought which holds that Olivier could not convincingly play any character born after around 1600, but light comedy was never really his forte, and he seems rather stiff as Logan. (His comedic skills did not improve with age, either. In "The Prince and the Showgirl", a film he himself directed some twenty years later, he was to prove even worse than he is here).
The main problem, however, is that tastes in humour have changed since 1938. Comedies about divorce and remarriage were very popular in the American cinema around this period, and although the British tended to be more Puritanical about such matters, films like this were not unknown on this side of the Atlantic. Now some of the American comedies of divorce were very good; "The Philadelphia Story", for example, must still rank as one of the best comedies ever made. Others, however, have dated badly; one example which comes to mind is "My Favourite Wife", even though it shared a leading man (Cary Grant) with "The Philadelphia Story". An important part of their original appeal is that they were considered modern, daring and ground-breaking and a way of showing just how modern, daring and ground-breaking the 1930s and 1940s were in comparison to the boring, fuddy-duddy 1910s and 1920s. Any objections from moralists could be overcome by pointing out that many of them end with the feuding couple still together or remarried. (In "The Divorce of Lady X" Lord and Lady Mere eventually reconcile when he discovers she is innocent of any wrongdoing).
More than sixty years on, however, films like this are no longer seen as daring or modern; in fact, the social attitudes they enshrine often seem very outdated. "The Divorce of Lady X" probably never had much going for it beyond the fact that it was trendy by the standards of 1938. That, unfortunately, does not in itself make it worth seeing in 2014. 4/10
Leslie Steele, a young socialite attending a charity ball at a London hotel, has to stay overnight because of a particularly bad "pea-souper" fog. As there are no rooms available, she is forced to share a suite with Everard Logan, a handsome young barrister specialising in divorce cases. Leslie is single, but a misunderstanding makes Logan believe that she is married, and she plays along with this misapprehension. Later Logan is approached by an old school friend, Lord Mere, who asks him to represent him in a divorce suit against his wife whom he suspects of adultery. Logan has never met Lady Mere, who happens to have been another guest at the same party, and a further series of misunderstandings leaves Logan convinced firstly that Lady Mere was the woman who spent the night in his suite and secondly that he himself is the man whom Lord Mere suspects of being his wife's lover. To complicate matters further, he is starting to fall in love with Leslie, even though he believes her to be another man's wife. Despite all these complications, he agrees to take on the case.
This was a remake of another film, "Counsel's Opinion", made only five years earlier by the same company, London Films. (Binnie Barnes, who plays Lady Mere here, appeared as Leslie in the earlier film). I have never seen "Counsel's Opinion", but the fact that it was remade so soon afterwards, in the then very expensive medium of Technicolor, suggests that the story was a popular one in the thirties. Today, however, it is difficult to understand why. To start with, it is obvious that the scriptwriters had very little legal knowledge. This becomes clear when Logan, in the middle of cross-examining a witness, suddenly launches into a lengthy tirade against modern women, only dubiously relevant to the subject of his cross-examination, without incurring the immediate severe rebuke from the Judge which would be the reward of any barrister who tried such tactics in real life. As a barrister, Logan would not have been permitted to receive instructions direct from his client rather than via a solicitor. And, most importantly, you don't need to know much about legal etiquette to realise that the idea of a lawyer prosecuting a case in which he himself might be named as a co-respondent is quite absurd.
These legal howlers might have been forgivable if the film had been made as a zany farce- there is, after all, something farcical about the idea of a lawyer ending up suing himself through a series of misunderstandings- but in a romantic comedy set in the world of the law they are simply embarrassing. They are not, however, the only reason why the story just does not work today. The best thing about the film is the lovely Merle Oberon. (Her husband, Alexander Korda, acted as producer). Laurence Olivier, however, seems strangely miscast. Now I have never been an adherent of that school of thought which holds that Olivier could not convincingly play any character born after around 1600, but light comedy was never really his forte, and he seems rather stiff as Logan. (His comedic skills did not improve with age, either. In "The Prince and the Showgirl", a film he himself directed some twenty years later, he was to prove even worse than he is here).
The main problem, however, is that tastes in humour have changed since 1938. Comedies about divorce and remarriage were very popular in the American cinema around this period, and although the British tended to be more Puritanical about such matters, films like this were not unknown on this side of the Atlantic. Now some of the American comedies of divorce were very good; "The Philadelphia Story", for example, must still rank as one of the best comedies ever made. Others, however, have dated badly; one example which comes to mind is "My Favourite Wife", even though it shared a leading man (Cary Grant) with "The Philadelphia Story". An important part of their original appeal is that they were considered modern, daring and ground-breaking and a way of showing just how modern, daring and ground-breaking the 1930s and 1940s were in comparison to the boring, fuddy-duddy 1910s and 1920s. Any objections from moralists could be overcome by pointing out that many of them end with the feuding couple still together or remarried. (In "The Divorce of Lady X" Lord and Lady Mere eventually reconcile when he discovers she is innocent of any wrongdoing).
More than sixty years on, however, films like this are no longer seen as daring or modern; in fact, the social attitudes they enshrine often seem very outdated. "The Divorce of Lady X" probably never had much going for it beyond the fact that it was trendy by the standards of 1938. That, unfortunately, does not in itself make it worth seeing in 2014. 4/10