New Morals for Old

After watching "New Morals for Old", I was left wondering just what was the point of this movie. I really am not sure....and wonder if the writer was equally undecided!

The film concerns a family of rich folks who seem to have way too much money and way too much time on their hands. Although the father (Lewis Stone) worked to make his fortune, his kids (Robert Young and Margaret Perry) seem like spoiled and rather amoral jerks. The son wants to run off to Paris to become a painter and the daughter wants to sleep with a married man. While the parents can't understand this sort of behavior, in this very permissive family, they really don't say much of anything about this. Eventually, the father dies and the son finally takes off to paint. And,...well, there really isn't much more to the film.

The film MIGHT be saying that a new, selfish and permissive age is coming or it might have tried saying that the parents were just old fashioned and behind the times--but I can't be sure. The movie seemed to take an amoral approach--showing the kids' behaviors in a very direct and non-judgmental manner. Well, I might have felt that was okay for the son but the film had a definite Pre-Code attitude about adultery, that's for sure. The bottom line is that I objected far less to the kids' actions and more that there was no sort of point to any of this...none.

Parents will have a tough time getting through New Morals for Old without staining a Kleenex or two with tears. The entire point of the film is that children never listen to their parents, even though their lessons are wise and worthy, and after they've seen a bit of life, they realize that their parents were right all along. If you hate your parents and don't want to eventually eat crow, you're not going to want to watch Robert Young and Margaret Perry do it in the movie. Watch something else tonight.

Margaret Perry is absolutely adorable, and even though she falls in love with a married man, David Newell, and becomes his mistress in a love nest, you can't help but love her. This was her first of two total films, and I have no idea why she didn't rocket to stardom. Not only is she cute to look at, but she has talent! In the movie, she really does feel bad about causing a rift in her family. She collapses in tears in her father Lewis Stone's lap when she tells him how she's living. Mother Laura Hope Crews won't receive David in the house and has a very strained relationship with her daughter forever after. Meanwhile, playboy Robert Young refuses to settle down and get a respectable job. He travels to Paris to become an artist and shacks up with the morally loose Myrna Loy.

If you like the message, this movie is worth watching. The acting is very good, and there are some pre-Code aspects that are sure to evoke a giggle. When Robert studies art, he attends the classic class to draw nudes, and since this movie was made in 1932, the model is shown. Myrna's ten minutes on the screen are also very raunchy, and the script makes no secret to her type of relationship with Bob.

There was a young man who was in two scenes in this movie that is uncredited, and I am trying to find out who he was. He had lines in both of his scenes. He appears first in the scene where Robert Young's character arrives in Paris at the art studio, just as the class is ending. The character/actor I am asking about was introduced as George Macintosh. He is short, young, dark haired, quite handsome, smiles a lot, and introduces Robert Young to the disinterested head of the art studio.

Phyl and her brother Ralph's bedroom play is so 30s flirty;) The Paris goodbye kiss is so smoldering hot. Tennessee Williams would love this so forbidden sexiness. The screenplay was based on the play "After All" by John Van Druten, author of "I Am A Camera" which was the basis of the musical "Cabaret". (I wonder what was left on the editing room floor.) What happened with Myra? There so many unanswered questions raised that it is not truly as predictable as it seems. All in all I consider it more of naughty tease. I was glad I could fast forward what was most totally predictable...and enjoy the fun of the queerness of it "After All".

Though hardly an example of pre-Code films at their raciest, the matter-of-fact treatment of looser sexual mores in this family drama may reveal more about its times than a more exploitative film would. A few years later Lewis Stone, the father here, would play the father of the most straightlaced and retrograde family in movie history (Andy Hardy's); yet here he is shown as accepting the idea that his son would go off to Paris to be an artist (and be shown breakfasting the next morning with his female neighbor, in pajamas) and that his daughter would have an affair with a married man, musing to his wife that they just have to get used to the different morals of different times. No masterpiece, but a sweet and enjoyable film that may remind you of James Ivory's Mr. and Mrs. Bridge.