Picture-Play Magazine (Jul - Dec 1929)

Tke Screen in ReVievtf 73 especially efficient in terminating Paul's romantic interlude with Delphine Martin and bringing him to his senses. He runs off to the country with Delphine, fondly believing that his wife doesn't suspect. But she and Delphine's easy-going husband pretend that they are in love with each other, whereupon the two runaways get on each other's nerves and return to their original mates. All this is played with verve and sparkle and civilized humor. Mr. Menjou's voice is a perfect expression of his personality. His French accent is that of a Frenchman speaking English, not the foreign accent of an American. Fay Compton, who is really important in the London theater, is the wife. Her performance is cool perfection, her speech a lesson to all who have the temerity to speak in public without training. Miriam Seegar, another newcomer, manages artfully to make the silly wife a charming person, and John Miljan, his villainy cast aside, is thoroughly agreeable as her husband. Home Life of a Genius. Dignified, beautiful, "Wonder of Women" is quietly thrilling too, but its values are for the thoughtful picturegoer, not the casual dropper-in. Its scenes of German life are meticulous in detail and exquisite in feeling. So much so that one feels that if there were no story at all it would be a pleasure to look at such backgrounds. But there is a story and a tender and moving one, too, dealing with a philandering composer who marries a quiet, domestic wife. Irked by the routine of a home, and chafing under his wife's gentle efforts to mold him to the pattern of a family man, he steals off to Berlin to renew his association with a prima donna. There his wife finds him, but her sympathetic understanding is such that she conceals her heartbreak. When she dies he is wakened to the realization that his wife and the humdrum virtues she represented have really been his inspiration. For the music he composes in the quiet home — hating it so much that he suffers it to be published only under an assumed name — turns out to be his finest, and is acclaimed on all sides as the work of a genius. Too much cannot be said of the acting which makes the picture memorable. Lewis Stone gives a marvelous portrayal of Stephen Tromholt, the composer, and Peggy Wood, from the stage, is ideal as the wife. The latter part of the picture in dialogue reveals the great strides made by Leila Hyams, as the prima donna, since she was heard in "Alias Jimmie Valentine." Lemon or Cream? There are times when actors doing society stuff are just a bit more exasperating than actors being tough and underworldly. It isn't that either phase is exactly unconvincing, but there comes a time when one wishes — at least I do — that something would happen to jolt them into dropping pretense and being themselves. Now, I don't imply that Ruth Chatterton, Clive Brook, and William Powell are any less well bred in real life than they are in "Charming Sinners." But they are somewhat tiresome, with incessant cigarette lighting, tea sipping, hand kissing and "my dear"ing. Over all is the languor not so much of drawing-room technique as a rather malarial story. Ethel Barrymore performed it on the stage as "The Constant Wife" and even her delicate art didn't wholly disguise its feebleness. But censorship has robbed it of its original climax and necessitated an equivocation. Instead of the constant wife's closing her eyes to her husband's infidelity until she announced her intention to go on a vacation with a former suitor, in the picture she only pretends to do so and ends with a moral lecture. Preceding this thunderbolt we see the elegant home life of Robert and Kathryn Miles, he a drawing-room doctor, she his graceful. correct wife, fully aware of his liaison with Anne-Marie Whitley, her friend. It is when Anne-Marie's hoodwinked husband suddenly finds himself possessed of evidence of his wife's philandering, that Kathryn saves the situation for everybody by claiming her husband's cigarette case — gold, of course, and monogrammed— as her own. It is then that Kathryn decides to teach her husband a lesson by playing the well-known game of tit for tat. All these maneuvers are elegantly set forth. In fact, if they'd Continued on page 94 'Thunder." "The Wheel of Life." 'Dangerous Curves."