Riptide

Norma Shearer's emotional range and charm is always a delight. Her costumes in shiny silk charmeuse and deep dark velvet translate so well in vintage black and white, and the topic of a woman's "decency" in the 30's and small minds is dramatic and poignant. I love this decade of movies for the history and social culture they often evoke.

One of the things I find interesting in these comments are how many people insist that this is a terribly old fashioned story that couldn't be made today. Really? Because while watching this all I could think was that if movies could be said to have a family tree, then I think the movie The Kids Are All Right, which has been praised to the skies for being such a "modern" story, shares plenty of DNA with Riptide. There is a theory that there are really only 36 plots, and every story is just different variations on those 36. I think the key when watching these movies is asking yourself, what is the basic bare bones plot of this story? Can this story be told now and is someone telling it? The answer is almost always yes. It's fun to realize the progression.

There were a couple of really great scenes in this. The bug costume scene in the beginning(that was a seriously skimpy spider costume!) and the scene where she gets drunk with Trent and jumps into the pool. I did wish the film would have followed up a bit more with her husband's secretary, who was clearly in love with her. They just showed him mooning over her the whole movie, but never went anywhere with that. It seemed a bit random. I think if you're not going to do anything significant with something like that, don't include it in the movie.

At the opening, Mary (oscar winning Norma Shearer) and Rexford (Herb Marshall) are getting ready for a costume ball. This was the mid-1930s, just as the film code was getting enforced more strictly, so it's not quite as spicy as it might have been. They get hitched, but then Rex gets sent away on business, and Mary goes to a party with old friend Tommie (R. Montgomery) . Things get steamy, things happen or don't, and now there are injuries and mis-understandings to be sorted out. Can things be set right? age old story of getting to the truth of what happened. it's pretty good. the cast list shows Walter Brennan as the chauffeur; he was doing a mix of credited and uncredited roles right up to the mid-1930s. appeared in TONS of things with john wayne! There is a smidge of humor here, between the sad and serious parts; Skeets Gallagher and Robert Montgomery both have a few funny, clever lines. Bea Tanner Campbell is naughty Aunt Hetty. her imdb bio contains amusing stories, even on her time making THIS film with Norma Shearer. only made 6 films... too bad. she was a lot of fun. It's pretty good entertainment. worth a watch.

She was incredible. This movie quickly jumps forward in time, but the dialogue between Mary (Norma) and Trent was great. If only she had kept making movies and not ended so abruptly.

No movies today compare to Riptide (which was controversial at the time)

Norma Shearer is a delight in this film, which was the last of her pre-Code appearances. She gives a very natural, charming performance in scenes that call for tenderness, temptation, flirtation, and playfulness, including those with the two leading men (Robert Montgomery and Herbert Marshall), her aunt-in-law (theater legend Mrs. Patrick Campbell), and her adorable daughter (Marilyn Spinner). She's helped considerably by the script which has a lot of life to it, something evident from the beginning, when we see Marshall in a giant 'Insect Man' costume and Shearer in a revealing 'Lady Sky bug' number, get ups designed by Adrian for a "World of the Future" ball. The story degenerates into a bit of a soap opera in its second half, but it had scored enough points with me early on that I didn't mind too much.

One thing that's great about it is its frankness with the sexuality of Shearer's character. From the dialogue, it's clear she's had premarital sex with men before meeting Marshall's character, and has sex with him too. She's content to leave it at a fling, but he wants marriage, a role reversal from what we'd traditionally see. At the same time, she's not portrayed as a tramp, on the contrary, she's sweet, funny, honest, and full of life. When they marry, though, the expectation is that she'll "settle down," which she jokingly agrees to ("From now on, a ring in the nose and a beating every Saturday night, please"). Fast forward five years, and tension comes in the form of Montgomery's character, a friend from her single days who meets her while her husband is travelling, and over drinks makes a pass at her. She rebukes him, but the story makes the newspapers, and between that, Montgomery's persistence, and Marshall judging her, she's torn between the two men from then on.

As I mentioned, it spirals a bit, but watching Shearer deal with the emotions of the character made the film for me. In one fine scene, Marshall throws her past up into her face while suspecting her of adultery, thinking of how she "didn't stop with a kiss" back in the day, calling to mind the double standard of the period. That's a little irritating, but this was the reality in 1934, and Shearer is given the power of choice, without being condemned. Eyebrows are raised by the other characters, but if she goes off with Montgomery's character they and the audience will know it's due to the thrill having faded from her marriage, and that she will survive. As she puts it, "No man is gonna let me or not let me do anything ever again."

The film drew the ire of the Father Daniel Lord, one of the authors of the Production Code, who condemned Shearer for taking the role of a "loose and immoral woman" and her husband Irving Thalberg for casting her in films like these, which in turn enraged Thalberg. Lord (and Joseph Breen's) position were more about keeping women in their place, since the behavior of Marshall's character is the same but there were no comments about a "loose and immoral man." They would soon put the shackles of the Production Code on Hollywood, which makes seeing this last Shearer film before that happened, at a time when she was quite good as an actor, special for me.