A Notorious Affair

If you like Kay Francis, this is probably a movie worth checking out. She's silky smooth as a man-eating seductress who has her sights on the husband of a rival. If there's a female equivalent to the "male gaze", she has it, and she's always in full control as she uses men and then casually discards them, including a couple of stable boys early on. It was interesting to see Basil Rathbone before he was a star and Billie Dove towards the end of her career (and in a talkie), but unfortunately the plot is overly melodramatic, and when Francis isn't lighting up the screen, the film is far less interesting.

Stilted dialogue, melodramatic performances, and a formulaic story are what make "Notorious Affair" from 1930 bad.

It's bad today; it was the style back then. Plays and movies dealt in melodrama and in the upper classes.

The film stars Kay Francis, Billie Dove, and Basil Rathbone, who is woefully miscast as an Italian violinist named Gherardi, mispronounced in the movie as "Gerardi". It's a hard G, Guhrardi. Francis plays a complete slut who goes to bed with every man she meets; she goes after Gherardi, who is married to Dove. He succumbs.

In one hilarious scene, he tells her he's going home. She shuts the curtains to her boudoir, and he stands there, face full of desire, closes his eyes, and sighs.

Both Francis and Dove are stunning and beautifully dressed. Francis has a presence and sophistication. Dove is luminescently beautiful, with huge, expressive eyes and an oval face. It's such a shame nearly every one of her films is lost. She retired very early from films but lived until age 94.

Rathbone, with his outrageously bad accent and overly made up face, is wooden and too big for the screen, having come from the theater. Screen acting with speaking was very new.

The gowns are gorgeous.

This film is a great example of the old acting style and type of film made pre-code. Most of all, it's a chance to see the gorgeous Billie Dove.

English socialite Lady Patricia (Billie Dove) falls for poor Italian violinist Paul Gherardi (Basil Rathbone). They quickly marry. Her father disapproves. Man-eating Countess Olga Balakireff (Kay Francis) manipulates Paul's rise to fame and drives a wedge between the married couple.

Kay Francis is the standout performer in this movie in a vampy performance. Billie Dove is overshadowed by her antagonist and I'm not sold on her relationship with Gherardi to begin with. He has more chemistry with Kay Francis although it's more like she sees him as a meal. This love triangle has no side with rooting interest.

Although Billie Dove is top-billed above the title and the rest of the cast, I'm with those who think Kay Francis the real reason for watching this nonsense - along with everything else in which she appeared during the first year of her contract with Paramount as a lisping 'other woman' in mannishly short hair and slinky plunging dresses. Aged only about 25 when the film was shot, but already exuding a mature sophistication that far surpassed Theda Bara, Francis makes poor Miss Dove looks positively homely by comparison.

Struggling with an incredible 'Continental' accent that increasingly slips as the film progresses, Basil Rathbone is saddled with the thankless part of a whiny violinist who Ms Francis soon tires of and abandons in the South of France the better to continue her tour of the rest of the opposite sex. Rathbone promptly succumbs to one of those mysterious debilitating illnesses so common in old movies; and the film becomes a real drag without her.

Photographed by Ernest Haller, the killer outfits Francis models and the imaginative sets are the work of Edward Stevenson and Anton Grot (both uncredited) in a surprisingly plush production to bear the name as director of veteran Warner Bros. workhorse Bacon.

This is a deliciously daft precode, notable for the appearance of a very pallid Basil Rathbone as a high-strung Italian violinist (or was he French?), one of the few available talkies made by wide-eyed, silent star Billie Dove, and mainly, the presence of a slinky, sex-mad countess Olga, played with great verve by Kay Francis, who early on establishes her credentials by trying out the stable boy and then checking out the older dude who works the feed duties: Kay is constantly on the prowl in a very modern sense, while the script sets up poor Billie as the put-upon wife who gives up fortune for love and finds out husband's real talent is infidelity.

For today's moviegoer, this is probably pretty dull stuff, but for the film historian, the fan of Kay Francis, or anybody who wants to enjoy the minor delights of an early "B" romance, this can be great fun.