Un ménage divisé

A House Divided (1913)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

A young husband and wife thinks the other is cheating on them so their lawyer makes them agree to live in the same house, appear to be "together" but in reality they are separated. The only way the two of them can communicate is by writing letters and soon they start to see something in each other that they never noticed. A HOUSE DIVIDED has a pretty simple and at times stupid story but director Alice Guy-Blache makes it worth. I'm really not sure how because it's unclear why a lawyer would recommend this considering he would make more money off of them getting a divorce but I guess that's putting too much thought into it. For the most part this is a pretty simple tale and it kept me entertained throughout thanks in large part to the director. Guy-Blache manages to make the film move at a very good pace and it never got boring, which is always a good thing. Both Fraunie Fraunholz and Marian Swayne are good in their roles as the husband and wife. The two manage to work quite well together and come across as a real couple.

A man gets sprayed with perfume by a salesman at work, and when he gets home, his wife thinks he's been with another women. He in turn finds some men's gloves and thinks she's been with another man. They look into a divorce, but decide to have a lawyer draw up a contract that will have them continue living together, communicating only through correspondence, but keeping up appearances their marriage is solid. This becomes particularly difficult when mother comes to visit, and they must also entertain guests. However, they do have a genuine love for each other, and it becomes increasingly difficult for them to remain mad at each other.

I think this could be considered an early screwball comedy, though it predates it as conventionally defined by twenty years.

Gerald and Diana Hutton are a young married couple who become very angry at each other when, based on the flimsiest evidence, they think the other is stepping out on them. Instead of their getting a divorce, their lawyer has them sign an agreement that they will "live separately together." They are not to talk to each other and communicate by writing notes. This is a difficult charade to keep up and they soon reconcile through shared amusement over the antics of their maid. They not only laugh at her but at the situation they got themselves into. The film is important to film history for being directed by Alice Guy who is now generally recognized as being the first woman film director. The lead actors are very engaging and the film moves along at a good pace.

This would have been a cute comedy but the acting is way over the top - very over acted even by 1913 standards. I wish this one had better actors in it then I would have enjoyed the film better. The way it is, it's not a bad little comedy.

5/10

I wasn't going to review this Solax production from Alice Guy, "A House Divided," as I don't find it particularly interesting. Despite reviewing what some might consider a lot of old silent movies, I don't write on all the ones I see. There are just too many relatively routine one-reelers during the transition period and before when the feature-length film had yet to fully dominate production. But, the actress playing the woman at the typewriter in the office scenes here, a minor character otherwise, is captivating in her mannerisms--her facial expressions, the way she puts her hands on her hips and in between her eye-catching faux operations of the typewriter. Moreover, her position in the frame for the office scenes (always the same camera positions, as part of Guy's continued insistence on the even then increasingly-dated tableau style) places her in a more prominent and central position than the husband character whose actions one would think we're supposed to be paying the most attention to. Initially, I missed the plot point of him meeting the perfume salesman that leads to the main thrust of the story, of the married couple's mutual jealousy, because I was watching his office mate instead. Plus, she's a welcome working-woman counterpart to the comparatively unremarkable housewife in the picture and a technological one to the hand-written letter motif of the couple's living "separately together."

The usual commentary on "A House Divided" is that it's a comedic reflection of Guy's real life problem with her philandering husband (and also a filmmaker and co-owner of Solax), Herbert Blaché, but I find that rather uninteresting. It's nice, though, I suppose, to see such examples of situational and domestic comedies--even a proto-comedy-of-remarriage--not in the slapstick tradition that some might still stereotype silent film comedy as. Still, besides the typist, who is just the right amount of emphatic, the acting here tends to be overly so. The husband needs to wipe that annoying smirk off his face, too; it's as though he's holding back laughing at his own mugging. The same actors who play the husband and wife here are better in the subsequent Solax production "Matrimony's Speed Limit," and the comedy, with the exception of a racist gag, is better, as well. Ultimately, I'd prefer to think the main story here is merely the musings being written by the typist.