Les enfants du divorce

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.

...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.

Early in the 20th century, divorced ex-pat Americans living in Paris dropped their unwanted children at the local convents and visited them only when their busy schedules permitted. Kitty and Jean were among these lonely children, and the pair quickly become friends. One day, a young boy, Edward, who was also a child of divorced parents, appears, and both girls are smitten with him. Years pass, and the three meet up again in the U.S., where a romantic triangle develops, which expands into a square, when a gold-digging prince enters the scene. "Children of Divorce," which was written by Adela Rogers St. Johns from a novel by Owen McMahon Johnson, is a sudsy melodrama, whose dated appeal lies, not in the story, but in the stars.

The "It" girl herself plays the adult Kitty; vivacious Clara Bow is wonderful as the sexually aggressive woman, who needs to marry well. Jean, Kitty's protector as a child and now described as the richest woman in America, has grown into lovely Esther Ralston. Ralston, who seems to have been largely forgotten, gives a naturalistic performance as a caring understanding woman, who is capable of self sacrifice. However, Jean's money is like catnip to the impoverished Prince Ludovico, played by Einar Hanson, and his uncle, Duke Henri, played by Norman Trevor. But the Prince and his uncle have to compete with tall lanky Gary Cooper of the piercing blue eyes, who captivates both Jean and Kitty. As the adult Edward, Cooper has it all: startling good looks, wealth, education, and lack of ambition. Besides the three stars, Hedda Hopper as Kitty's self-absorbed mother also makes an impression, although the rest of the cast has unfortunately fallen into obscurity.

Besides the melodramatic plot, a few aspects of this silent film may be off putting to general audiences. While the sets are convincing, they are so tall they disappear into the clouds, and the gargantuan doors dwarf the performers. Although a few flourishes of the grand style intrude, the acting is generally natural and underplayed. The film is short, even shorter if the inter-titles are taken into account, and director Frank Lloyd maintains a good pace. However, "Children of Divorce" will likely appeal primarily to silent-film buffs. Already attuned to both the limitations and the pleasures of pre-sound movies, aficionados of silent cinema can overlook the unconvincing drama and relish the luminous stars. Indeed, they had faces then, and Clara Bow, Gary Cooper, and Esther Ralston provide ample evidence herein.

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.

Seems as though everyone's in love with everyone else in this soaper from what ultimately became Paramount Studios. There are good performances from all concerned, even from Gary Cooper in his first starring role. It is summarized by the reviewer from the Library of Congress above, and is a jumble of love shuffled among the various characters. The nominal star is Clara Bow, who here plays the 'heavy', but all eyes are on Gary Cooper, who subsequently became a huge Hollywood star. Esther Ralston has the supporting actress role and she is beautiful in a sympathetic part.

The film is what amounts to a polemic on the hazards of divorce but is not without merit. There are several poignant, sentimental moments which hold up due to some very competent performances, even by Cooper himself in his first big part. The year is 1927 and the film holds some very outdated views of marriage and divorce but, as often with silents, they must be viewed with a sense of atavism, as when one goes to a museum - or, in this case, a film festival. (Capitolfest, Rome, N.Y., 8/12/16.