Quand une femme aime

The first scene, with Norma Shearer and Herbert Marshall dressed as insects, is hilarious. The plot is old fashioned, but Norma looks so beautiful that you tend to forget it.

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.

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.

Lord Rexford (Hebert Marshall) is an English aristocrat visiting Manhattan, and he meets Park Avenue party-girl Mary (Norma Shearer) when they share a ride to a costume party. They hit it off immediately, ditch the party, and start a Vacation Romance.

The Vacation Romance turns serious when the Lord is supposed to go back to the UK and he asks Mary to marry him. It's made clear that they were already having sex and that he knows of her "past" flings with other men. Mary resists at first, worried how he'd feel later on about marrying a woman who has been around a few times, but gives in.

"A ring in the nose and a beating every Saturday night, please!"

A few years later we see that they are still happily in love ... or perhaps I should say -nauseatingly- in love because they lay it on thick when they get all lovey-dovey.

The Lord has to go away on a business trip to the US and can't take Mary, so he leaves her with his Aunt Heddy who lures her away to Cannes for the duration. It's there that she runs into an old flame, Tommy (Robert Montgomery), and things get complicated. They get drunk and exchange a kiss. That gets Tommy's engines going and he goes after Mary even though he knows she is married!

What follows is a bit of comedy, a bit of melodrama, and a lot of business about Mary's scandalous past (and present).

"In New York you were the kind of girl who didn't stop at a kiss!"

It's an interesting story with some great actors and clever dialogue.

Recommended!

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.