Paris Bound

This 1929 early sound film based on a lesser Phillip Barry play takes seriously the very people that Cole Porter so devastatingly satirized in his immortal songs. We even have an arty ballet montage staged by Stanislavski's assistant Richard Boleslavski to prove that pretension is not just a recent occurrence. Bad art has been with us always. This is the film debut of the beautiful and lady-like Anne Harding, the perfect upper class American girl that Katherine Hepburn was to play more successfully a few years later in Barry's best play. Fredric March, the best leading man of the day, does a lot of serious kissing here to justify that he really loves his wife and kid despite his weakness of character. What seemed madly sophisticated then in 1929 seems enormously silly now. After watching this, just put on your favorite Cole Porter album. His songs are still with us to remind us that once upon a time anything went.

Slow and stilted, this film is obviously the adaptation of a play--all the action takes place (or could) in one room. The director shows his tin ear (and whatever is the visual equivalent) by starting the movie with Ann Harding and Fredric March going through the wedding service, which goes on and on and on. The two attractive leads, both highly accomplished actors, are the reason for seeing this, as are such distinctly period touches as his saying to her "Take a deep breath" and handing her a cigarette. Ilka Chase also makes two brief, welcome appearances as a fashionable, flippant socialite. But the plot is minuscule and is also well past its use-by date--we're told that a good wife overlooks a husband's affairs if he really loves her and the other women mean nothing to him. And how does she know he feels that way? Because he says so!

Dated, stagey and suffering from a static camera, this early Philip Barry play still manages to pack a wallop due to Barry's wonderful dialogue and the strengths of the leads, Frederick March and Ann Harding, right at the beginning of their careers, but possessed of a naturalness that carries this movie along. Thanks to the Vitaphone Project for reuniting the rediscovered soundtrack to the moving image.

"Paris Bound" is clearly a Pre-code film with its strange moral sensibilities and it probably will shock most viewers today. However, I also found that the film's message was bizarre and confusing to say the least.

When the film begins, Jim (Frederic March and Mary (Ann Harding in her first film) are getting married. On the day of the wedding, Mary has a strange talk with Jim--almost like she is suggesting an open marriage where each can sleep with whomever they like. Later, it seems more like she really, perhaps, intended to say they both could have their own lives and friends of the opposite sex...which is, practically speaking, an invitation to have an open marriage. Well, Jim is the nice and dutiful husband...for a few years. Unfortunately, Nora is a real 'modern girl' and offers to become his mistress.

In the meantime, you see some weird interludes with Jim's parents. They are divorced and the father blames it all on his wife! He admits to having had affairs but that, to him, seems hardly a reason to end the marriage as these ladies meant nothing to him(??). So, SHE is painted as the unreasonable person. Later, this man advises Mary to take his attitude...and when Mary learns that Jim might have a mistress, she ponders sleeping with her best friend, a man she often hangs out with when Jim is off on business trips.

Does all this sound odd and confusing? Well, wait until you see the ending...and then you'll most likely wonder what the film was all about and what messages it was trying to convey. I know that it's NOT a great film if you want to give newlyweds some healthy marital advice!

So is it any good? Well, I think Harding sometime overacted. March was fine even if his character seemed detestable. Overall, however, the film came off as a bit stagy and unsatisfying. It's also the sort of amoral film that the studios would abandon once the new Production Code was put into effect in mid-1934.

Creaky early talkie in which Ann Harding nearly blows her idyllic marriage to Fredric March by jumping to conclusions. Leslie Fenton is the songwriter friend hoping for the chance to comfort her. The characters are one-dimensional, and the acting is terrible and if I was Freddie I'd be more than a little miffed at how quick my wife is to believe the worst...