The Divorce of Lady X

"The Divorce of Lady X" is a lovely color film produced by Alexander Korda--a man who had a great history producing films in the UK and US. However, compared to many of Korda's other great films, this one comes up a bit average. It has a great idea but something about it kept it from being a bit better.

The film begins in a horrible London fog. It's so foggy that folks can't get home and a hotel is totally booked. The last person to get a room, Everard (Laurence Olivier), is dead tired and miffed when the management asks him to share his suite since there are so many looking for rooms. Despite this, a very pushy and determined woman, Leslie (Merle Oberon), is able to finagle a bed in his room--and here is complications arise. He thinks she's a married woman and the next day, a man comes to hire him (as he's a barrister--that's a lawyer to us Americans) to sue his wife for divorce--and the woman the new client describes sounds EXACTLY like the woman who just spent the night with him! What's he to do? He's initially afraid that he's about to be named a co-respondent but later it's more complicated when he thinks that he's falling in love with this woman--a woman he thinks has been married four times already!

I nearly gave the movie a 7, so I did like it. However, sometimes I really thought they made Oberon's character too obnoxious and unlikable. Additionally, why Olivier's character would want to marry her is perplexing considering she's so obnoxious, manipulative AND he thinks she's been married many times already. Add to this a ridiculous courtroom scene at the very end, it just kept me wishing they'd edited or re-written the thing a bit.

I loved the dialogue above all - the sharp and witty banter between British 'icons' Olivier and Oberon, and even the playful back and forth between Morton Selten as Lord Steele and H.B. Hallam as his long-suffering butler, Jeffries. Binnie Barnes was also superb as Lady Mere; her accent might have slipped, but she definitely had the right attitude for her character! The use of colour was also a plus, particularly with the wonderful outfits. I think Merle Oberon would have done better without the continuous close-ups - though she did have a certain magnetism, she doesn't quite hold up to such inspection - and Olivier was definitely better suited to the stage: indeed, that is probably where he thought he was, judging by the delivery of some of his character's lines. The improbability of the story aside, 'The Divorce of Lady X' is a wry 'snapshot' of its era: gender, class, morality - even weather (it's very hard to believe that London had smog so bad that people were unable to travel, but it did happen).

This DIVORCE OF LADY X is the sort of film about misunderstandings among the upper crust of society that American audiences usually associate with someone like Norman Krasna, who wrote so many romantic comedies where someone assumed a different identity to keep the mistaken identity theme afloat for the duration of the plot. If I hadn't known better, I would have suspected he had a hand in this screenplay.

Here we have an early comedy from the U.K., courtesy of Alexander Korda, making use of three strip Technicolor--very low-key color apparently, at least judging from the rather poor Public Domain prints I've seen.

LAURENCE OLIVIER plays a barrister whose disdain for women is on a level with Professor Henry Higgins--he tolerates them until he falls in love with them. The joke here is that he is mistaken about the identity of MERLE OBERON, who gets even with him after finding out how rudely he treats women, by pretending to be the wife of RALPH RICHARDSON. He's hoodwinked by her until the very end when she realizes they share a mutual attraction.

It's amusing to watch Olivier and Oberon tackle these lightweight roles only a year before joining forces again for WUTHERING HEIGHTS. He has some very scathing comments to make about the opposite sex and plays his role with gusto. She's a bit more restrained in her role but together they show the kind of chemistry they would also get to display in the William Wyler film the following year.

This would have been more watchable if the color wasn't so badly in need of restoration.

Summing up: Amusing comedy of manners among British aristocracy.

P.S. - This is an update on my review of the film. Saw it today in brightly restored Technicolor which at least adds to the film's entertainment value, though the script is the main trouble. But TCM featured it in pristine condition in color that was extremely washed out and primitive looking before. It's now seen to advantage and adds a great deal of interest to viewing it as it was originally intended.

I had really only been exposed to Olivier's dramatic performances, and those were mostly much later films than *Divorce*. In this film, he is disarmed of his pomp and overconfidence by sassy Merle Oberon, and plays the flustered divorce attorney with great charm.

Lawrence Olivier and Merle Oberon did two movies together within two years. One is considered one of the great romantic films of all time, and the movie that made Olivier a great movie star (and gave Oberon her best performance role): WUTHERING HEIGHTS. The other is this film, made in England a year earlier. THE DIVORCE OF LADY X is a romantic comedy (as WUTHERING HEIGHTS is a romantic tragedy). Olivier is a lawyer, Everard Logan, who is a dynamic barrister, but is also a total misogynist. One night he checks into a hotel just ahead of a crowd of people. It is a very foggy night (the type of pea soup fog that London was known for up until a notorious "killer" fog in the 1950s), and the crowd (who'd been attending a party in the hotel) need beds. The management tries to get Logan to allow one or two socialite ladies to sleep on a couch and a day bed in his rooms, but he refuses. But he has not reckoned with Merle Oberon as Leslie Steele. The granddaughter of a high court judge, she manages to get into Logan's rooms and manipulates him to not only agree to her sleeping there, but appropriates his bed (he goes onto the couch - much to his discomfort).

The next day they share a breakfast, and in the smalltalk it is evident that despite his mistrust of women Logan finds Leslie very attractive. But she kittenishly refuses to tell him her name. She is determined to learn more about him, and she finds his attitude toward women infuriating. In the meantime, Logan is approached by a wealthy nobleman (Ralph Richardson as Lord Mere) as a potential client. Mere suspects his wife Lady Mere (Binnie Barnes) of having an affair. In fact, he tells Logan her Ladyship was with her lover in the hotel that Logan knows he was in on the night of the fog. Logan (naturally) jumps to the conclusion that Lady Mere was his mysterious roommate that night. I will not go into the plot any further, except to say that Leslie eventually realizes what a mistake Logan has made, and decides to use it to teach him a lesson about women.

The script has the feel of a Wodehouse novel, but is slighter. Still the performances of Olivier, Oberon, Richardson, Barnes, and Morton Selden (as Oberon's grandfather) are all splendid. It shows what a good cast can do with even the slightest of materials. Take a look at some of the minor scenes to see what I mean: Selden's first scene, complaining about his weak coffee to his butler/valet, who tells him off properly (they've been used to each other's personalities for years). Or Olivier dealing with a young clerk in his office, who is certain there were two Lady Meres in the office two minutes before (there were, but Oberon and Barnes left together), and ends up thinking the poor clerk is a simpleton. Or the waiter in the hotel who can't understand why the tenant in Olivier's room is constantly changing from a man to a woman to a man. As I said, a slight charming comedy - but it is very charming.