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Customer Reviews of Private Lives

Coward-y Custard
With "Private Lives", MGM production head Irving Thalberg attempted to further the career of his wife, Norma Shearer. He would have done better to put her in another of the naughty drawing-room comedies she was so good at doing. In 1931, it was impossible to put an honest "Private Lives" on film, and the compromises that were made to turn the play into a Shearer vehicle actually sabotaged Norma.

The movie version is "opened up" considerably from the play; screenwriter Hans Kraly threw everything from train trips to mountain-climbing into Coward's two-set comedy. Kraly missed the point Coward was making: that Elyot and Amanda's world is themselves alone. Staging some of their famous fights in public made them look pathetically in need of professional help, not inextricably bound to one another.

Kraly was required to do some violence to the play's text by way of studio-mandated censorship. Coward had motivated his characters by giving Elyot and Amanda dialogue with a keen erotic edge, much of which Kraly was obliged to remove. With so much of the sexual charge gone, the remaining words felt like little more than disagreements between two unsympathetic people.

Shearer also suffered from the casting of Robert Montgomery as Elyot. His performance is clockwork, remembering every line and bit of business, hitting every mark, but never finding Amanda necessary as life itself. Shearer was often able to transcend her lack of training if she was playing to a deeply talented actor, and it's too bad she didn't have that blessing on this film.

The supporting cast was uneven; Una Merkel has a weird, grainy accent that slides loopily between transatlantic hoity-toity and Southern belle, and she joins Montgomery in playing by the numbers. Of the four principals, Reginald Denny is the one who gets his role, Victor, exactly right. Victor's tweedy and stolid, but he wants to be sexy and carefree, and Denny does his dilemma perfect justice.

There is one really fine thing in this movie; Cedric Gibbons' set of the Riviera hotel where the two couples meet is Art Deco at its best. As with all truly great movie sets, this one suggests much more than is actually shown. We can tell that in this hotel, every man wears a Charvet scarf, all the linens are hand-laundered Porthault, and every guest and staff member is available for amour. If you're looking for joy here, you can have it, whether you're seeking the emotion or the perfume.

And there's Shearer. Despite all the baggage MGM saddled her with, she's a delight in the balcony scene and again in the knock-down, drag-out fight she has with Montgomery (highly athletic in real life, Norma actually knocked her co-star out at one point). While she never reaches the heights legend gives to Gertrude Lawrence, she knows what Amanda's about, and she is able to communicate it, mostly by playing between the lines of mangled dialogue.

Chalk this one up as an honest try, within the considerable limitations of the studio system, to do something the movies seldom attempt any more: bringing intelligent comedy to the masses. If this "Private Lives" was not all it should have been, it's much, much more than any major studio would do for moviegoers today. Watch it.

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Strangely Potent
Well, it ain't Noel and Gerty, but it ain't bad, either. Long regarded as a pale imitation of the West End and Broadway original (which MGM helpfully filmed so Mrs. Thalberg could study Lawrence's effects at leisure), all these years down the road the film version stands on its own pretty legs. Nice comic playing from Montgomery and a really fine performance from Norma Shearer (if only she'd been this light in THE WOMEN, that movie would be a half-hour shorter!) Fun to compare this to the play; both the opening-up and the dance around the censors find some happy solutions. Plenty to enjoy here.

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A CHARMING VENTURE INTO 1931.
Considering this movie is over 70 years old, it holds up extremely well! Montgomery and Shearer act in a refreshing, modern manner, and the dialogue is sparkling. One can see what the public saw in both the leading players: Montgomery has a sly, rascally personality, while Shearer is quite the 1931 "moderne". They play a couple with a tempestuous relationship. Although once married, they have since divorced and married other mates. While honeymooning at the same French hotel, (Quelle coincidence!) they have trouble showing affection to their new spouses and realise they still feel passionately about one another. The video print is clear and sharp and the sound is very good. Excellent acting combined with Coward's witty dialogue make this film a rather surprising treat from the early talkie era.