La femme traquée

A potboiling soap opera with Kay Francis decked out in all the most exaggerated finery of the day.

Emotions abound throughout as logic and reason are cast to the wind. This is what they were aiming toward and what the audience wanted. They expected Kay Francis to suffer and emote and play on the heartstrings of some innocent man.

Her actions in this film are so illogical that they can only be seen as the conveyance to situations where Francis can suffer and emote even more.

They pulled it off fairly well.

Stella Parish (Kay Francis) is a famous stage star in England. Her private life is private. As she reaches new heights, a mystery man from her past threatens it all. She escapes to America with her daughter Gloria and close personal friend Nana (Jessie Ralph). Eager reporter Keith Lockridge (Ian Hunter) smells a story and follows them.

I really like the mystery man with him not showing his face. I would like for the mystery figure to show up once in awhile. In comparison, Keith is less compelling. The exposition is a bit too long, but she does have to tell the whole story. I would have liked this story more as a mystery thriller and less as a melodrama.

I Found Stella Parish masterfully engages the viewer. It is very stylized hokum, but yet it is sincere and rather poignant. Kay Francis plays an actress with a secret past that involves having given birth to a child out of wedlock. Taking a break from her stage career, she decides to focus on her role as a mother and travels incognito with her daughter, played by Sybil Jason. It's a nice bit of casting, and their performances nicely complement each other.

Three years later, Warners would reunite Francis and Jason on screen in Comet Over Broadway. Once again, they are mother and daughter, and once again Miss Francis is an actress.

A chance for Kay Francis to drop her r's, wear a stunning Orry-Kelly wardrobe, and emote in several styles, this melodrama, effectively directed by Mervyn LeRoy, has her as an American who's become the First Lady of the West End, rather like Talullah Bankhead. She also has a daughter--Sybil Jason, whom several posters have panned, and I think she's good--and a Deep Dark Secret, which, when a silhouetted Barton MacLane threatens to expose it, sends her packing after a triumphant opening night (in a play about Caligula, and it looks like a dog) and running off to New York in unconvincing old-lady disguise. She's trailed by Ian Hunter, a reporter determined to uncover her history, and as he's exposing her unsavory past to the public, he's also falling in love with her. The implausibilities just keep mounting: Once in New York, Stella abandons her disguise, yet NO ONE recognizes her though she's the toast of the London theater, and her fall to cheap burlesque makes no sense, nor does the happy-ending resolution, with Hunter performing a good deed (aided by her producer, a dapper Paul Lukas) that makes everything right. It's mighty entertaining, though, and Kay, sometimes just a clothes horse, does some actual acting.

Lots of people seem to have negative things to say about this old film, but you have to remember when you watch it that Kay Francis was the consummate precode actress. When the production code began to be enforced in 1934, Warner Brothers had to struggle to find the right vehicles for Kay that would also not violate the code. Although this is not the best work she did before Jack Warner threw her and her career under the bus in 1937, it is a solid little film.

Kay plays successful American stage actress Stella Parish living in England. Stella lives a quiet life with her daughter, and refuses to be interviewed by the press or have any photo taken of her that is not a publicity still with her in full makeup for whatever role she is playing. One night, after a performance, someone who recognizes her from "her old days" waits for her in her dressing room and attempts to blackmail her. Stella reacts by fleeing England in the dead of night, daughter in tow. Reporter Keith Lockridge (Ian Hunter) is on her trail looking for the story of his career. He finds that story - where Stella is now and who she really is as far as her past is concerned - but he also finds romance. Of course the whole time Keith is befriending Stella she has no idea he is a reporter. After he has already turned in his story to his editor, Stella comes to him, confesses that she considers him a trusted friend and more, and then tells him the story behind the facts he has put in his headline, all the time thinking he knows nothing of her past. Justifiably feeling like a heel, Keith tries to squash the story he has sent back to London, but it is too late - the story is already in the papers being sold on the streets. What did Stella do in her past to cause her to flee, and how will this pan out for everyone involved? Watch and find out.

This is worth watching for the reason that most Kay Francis films are worth seeing - nobody suffers for her past sins and more-so the sins of others that have done her wrong like Kay Francis, and nobody looks that good while doing so. As for Ian Hunter, I really liked Kay best opposite William Powell and George Brent, and I thought Mr. Hunter was just a bit too bland to be paired with the glamorous Kay in most cases. This is one of the exceptions as he really plays the part of the reporter quite well. He doesn't play a Lee Tracy style journalist here. Instead he plays a classy man with a not so classy job who has to reconcile this with a pesky conscience that's finally beginning to bother him.

What is bad about the film? For one thing, I've never been a huge Sybil Jason fan, and in this part as Stella's daughter she's just over the top sticky sweet. Also, the production values are thrown together. Someone has already mentioned the business of English cars with the steering on the left hand side as well as the odd play Kay is starring in that is supposed to be about ... Caligula??? I'd recommend this to anyone who likes Kay Francis and old films from the 30's, but do be advised there are more than a few holes in the plot and the art design.