The Lady Refuses

I saw this film on YouTube and was rather impressed by it. The adult themes of the interesting story held my attention, but what really sold me was, to me, the always-good Betty Compson, an actress whose heyday was in the silent films, and though she couldn't sing or dance, became quite popular in the early talkie days by virtue of the fact that she not only had a fine speaking voice, but she could really act. She's just fine playing the street girl with the heart-of-gold here, and the story and settings are good as well. If I can fault the production, it's in the fact that, despite being set in London, no one (save for Daphne Pollard) speaks with anything like a British accent. I chalk this up to it's "early talkie" status and the fact that, perhaps in those days, the producers weren't sure that a genuine British accent would go over with a "Yank" audience. The theme music over the opening and closing credits is "My Dream Memory", from Betty's 1929 picture, Street Girl. In that picture, Betty did her own playing on the violin of that song.

This is another Compson story that does not avoid the scandalous. While the Code would not want supposedly middle class moral families exposed to a lower class prostitution story, there is nothing in the plot that strays from praising wealth and condemning immorality. Veblen's conspicuous consumption is the reason to watch. In the absence of strict censorship, high fashion provides cover for quasi-nudity. This not so early talkie has inconveniences like camera noise, bad dialog and incoherent acting. But concerning the looks of apartments, night clubs, the sounds of jazz, fashions, beauty, dark lighting, noisy editing, a blurry camera this is fairly inimitable. To show prostitution as an economic choice was still normal in 1931.

Sad morally questionable British drama/romance about a father who hires a new prostitute to lure his son away from a gold digger...but in the process falls in love with her himself! Of course the lady in question starts bringing up the "code among gentleman" and how he would always wonder or question her.

Wonderful early 30's clothing and set. I learned that cocktails and ice were an American thing.

If you are ok with melodrama this might be for you.

"Beds aren't respectable, especially this bed, wicked little spider."

"Don't worry, don't blush, I once studied to be a nurse."

Sir Gerald Courtney (Gilbert Emery) is worried that his hard-partying son Russell (John Darrow) has been trapped by gold-digging Berthine Waller (Margaret Livingston). He recruits desperate and poor June (Betty Compson) to block the gold-digging hussie and he's willing to pay a large sum.

The father spends a lot of time with June at the start and ends up building all the chemistry. The problem with the 'courtship' is that she's initially faking it. It's not real chemistry. While the premise is interesting, it struggles to generate romantic heat for a long time. Eventually, she shows her true colors when she's alone and that turns things around.

I agree with the other reviewers: This isn't a great movie because it is too stage bound, the plot is far-fetched, the London setting unconvincing (why not New York?), and some of the acting is wooden or uneven. However, John Darrow is convincing as a talented young man a little too enslaved by his passions, and he is sexually alive and compelling. Betty Compson is great - hers is the performance that make this and so many other pre-Production Code movies worthwhile. She has no shame about who she is (nor has Margaret Livingston, who appears to have stepped out of Valley of the Dolls), and her last speech earns the movie a 7 in my book. She is completely liberated, though she knows how to and does pay lip-service to conventional morality. It is this combination, the lip-service combined with the complete independence, that makes this pre-Production Code movie (among many) so radical. Her final scene eloquently gives the lie to conventional morality and left me agape. No need for the 1960s-lib genre with movies like this.