Filhos do Divórcio

'Children of Divorce' is about a love quadrangle: childhood friends Kitty (Clara Bow) and Jean (Esther Ralston) on the one side, Vico (Einar Hanson) and Ted (Gary Cooper) on the other. Kitty and Vico love each other, as do Jean and Ted, but what looks straightforward is a receipe for tragedy. This is because Kitty has been taught by her mother that a woman needs to marry wealth - at least when she marries for the first time - and unfortunately Vico is not wealthy. He is the scion of impoverished (that's a relative term) European nobility and expected to do his duty by his family and marry wealth himself. Ted is wealthy and is altogether a bit of a playboy. Tragedy strikes when Jean puts off marrying him until he has got a proper job. Kitty uses the time in order to organise a raucous party, and on the morning after Ted wakes up to discover that, in a drunken stupor, he has married her rather than his true love Jean.

The highlights of the picture are Clara Bow and Gary Cooper. Cooper playes his role evenhandedly. He is remarkable rather because of his later stardom than because his acting here is particularly outstanding. Bow, by contrast, is outstanding. She starts out as a careless flapper and ends as a desparately unhappy woman who sees suicide as her only way out, and every detail and moment of this transition is absolutely convincing. The plot is obviously pretty convoluted and heavy on morals. It does lay it on rather thick, I must say. The viewers are clearly expected to take away the message that divorce was to be avoided at all costs (Kitty's, Jean's and Ted's parents are all divorced, and it is Kitty's divorced mother whose idea of marriage is at the bottom of all the trouble). I am generally no fan of films that try to educate the audience in such a way, but in this case Clara Bow's performance makes up for the deficiencies, at least to a very large extent. All in all, the upsides of 'Children of Divorce' (meaning her and Cooper) outweigh the downsides by quite a bit. In sum: good film.

...and I mean that in a double sense. First there is the scenario which is a traditional love triangle. Two young girls meet in a "divorce colony" in Paris and become childhood friends. It's a place run by nuns where children of well-to-do divorced parents are left so that the parents can get on with their lives. Sometimes the parents even came back to visit. One day the friends encounter a rich boy who has scaled the colony wall. They promise to remember each other and he departs.

The three grow up to be Esther Ralston, Clara Bow, and Gary Cooper. Cooper is rich, Ralston has become rich and Bow is looking to become rich. The best way for her to do that is to marry Cooper who is in love with Ralston. However Cooper marries Bow after a drunken one night stand which he doesn't remember. Needless to stay things do not go smoothly and none of the principals are happy. This ultimately leads to a surprising but powerful ending with Bow giving one of her best performances. The popular moral of the story was quite clear. Marry for love and not for money or there will be consequences. But then of course it's the consequences that the mostly female audience came to see. After all CHILDREN OF DIVORCE is a 1920s "chick flick".

1927 was Clara Bow's biggest year as a box office star with IT!, WINGS, and this film among others. This was Gary Cooper's first big role and although considered miscast at the time, his performance has improved with age because of who he became. In fact this is classic Cooper although he's younger (26) then we're used to seeing him. Clara was romantically involved with Cooper at the time and lobbied for him to get the part. Esther Ralston is forgotten today but she was a big star in the late 1920s under contract to Paramount at over $1,250 a week. She was in PETER PAN (1924) and OLD IRONSIDES (1926).

Also in the cast is Hedda Hopper in a small role as Bow's mother. This is before she became celebrated as the gossip columnist famous for her hats. The pleasant surprise is how good the principal performances are considering the material. The Scottish born director Frank Lloyd had been around since the early days of silent movies (his 1917 A TALE OF TWO CITIES deserves to be restored and released) and he would go on to direct the Oscar winners CAVALCADE (1933) and MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY (1935). However this project wasn't his cup of tea so an uncredited Josef von Sternberg was brought in to tidy things up.

The other aspect of this being better than it has any right to be has to do with the restoration of the film. The original camera negative had been deposited at The Library Of Congress and a fine grain master copy was created in 1969 but parts of the movie were already beginning to deteriorate. By the turn of the century restoration technology had improved dramatically and after 7 months of laborious work using the best of both sources, this new digital version was created and it looks gorgeous. I'm one of those old school silent film enthusiasts who prefers DVDs to Blu-Rays as the latter gives us too much detail and the contrast always seems to be an issue.

However with this Flicker Alley release you can have your cake and eat it too as it contains both formats. The score by the Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra is also first rate. An ideal vehicle for Flicker Alley's 50th release, this is for all silent film fans. It should be pointed out that this is one of the last projects made with the help of Film Preservation Associates and Blackhawk Films head David Shepard who died earlier this year. He was one of the most important figures in silent film preservation and will be greatly missed...For more reviews visit The Capsule Critic.

Marriages, divorces,..mariages,divorce, ... ok, ok, , you want enjoy Life, but what about the children Hearts ?

This movie is a divorce trial and of wedding trial. To Avoid divorce try to succeed your marriage, it's seems evident but haw many people really think of that ?

Traumatised by abandon Kitty & Jean wanted 2 things, first never divorce, so make a good marriage.

It's such a moving Clara, who make you cry for sure, apparently she's seems happy, but inside juste broken and desperate, she always made the wrong things, thinking of course they was the best things to do,...

A movie who is still topical , even if actually divorced children are no longer abandonned.

Eternal questions: What is the way to succeed a marriage ? If it fails, divorce is a solution but how doing it softly for kids ? etc...

Children Of Divorce has an honored place among films of Hollywood's wildest child of the Roaring 20s Clara Bow It's also her second film with Gary Cooper with whom she was getting wild with at the time.

According to the Citadel Film series book on the Films Of Gary Cooper, Bow saw him and raved like the rest of the American public in his breakout role in The Winning Of Barbara Worth. She got him a small role in her film coming up which was It and personally saw he was cast as the male lead in Children Of Divorce.

Two girls who met as kids and coming from divorced parents grow up to be Clara Bow and Esther Ralston. Esther is a good girl with firmly fixed ideas on morality and a man size crush on a boy who grows up to be Gary Cooper. Clara is not so good and she has a fool proof way of getting a man. In fact after a drunken orgiastic night they find themselves married.

Ralston who has a lot of bucks on her own gets nailed by an impoverished prince who played by Einar Hansson on the rebound. Hansson wants to start living like a prince for a change.

Bow is at her hedonistic best in Children Of Divorce. And as we all learned the movie camera just loved Gary Cooper. He was fortunate indeed to have a voice that matched that look when talkies came in.

Children Of Divorce is the kind of old fashioned morality tale that is unlikely to be remade today. One for fans of the stars.

The Frank Lloyd directed film, April 1927's "Children of Divorce," opens at a Catholic divorce colony where recently-single parents who can't afford to raise kids by themselves drop off their children on a temporary basis. The children actors playing the three leads form a close bond, with Ted (Cooper) promising to marry Jean (Ralston) when they grow up while Kitty (Bow) looks on. But as adults, flapper Jean gets Ted drunk at a party and marries him, much to the consternation of intended lover Jean.

Ralston claims being on the set with the 22-year-old Clara was both enjoyable and scandalous. She recalls Bow describing in detail where and how she and her actor boyfriend Cooper made love, causing cast members to experience a red glow on their faces listening to such escapades. Bow also saved Cooper's budding career by intervening on his behalf when Lloyd threatened to release the young actor for constantly not remembering his movements in a early scene. Cooper's visibility in "Children of Divorce" catapulted his screen presence, launching him towards Hollywood stardom.

As for Clara, "Children of Divorce" provided her with one of the most dramatic scenes in her growing portfolio. Near the film's ending, Bow's character swallows poison because she realizes she can't marry a prince. She lays in bed comforted by her childhood friend Jean, who forgives her for her past indiscretions. The dramatic sequence's atmosphere required more than director Lloyd provided. So Paramount brought in young director, Josef von Sternberg, who was gaining a reputation for his expert lighting, to reshoot Kitty's final moments. His genius was to provide the shadow of a curtain sweeping over her as the nun lowers the wondow drape, emphasizing the end of Kitty's tempestuous life.