Julia gets on Johnny’s case when he won’t submit to being a kept husband. Edward Griffith directs this early sound melodrama in a stagy and static fashion as the actors perform for the camera as if it were an automaton audience. Though we see through the camera lens we are offered only the superficial genre tropes, not deep insight into the characters and their desires: merely stating them in clear language doesn’t give us perceptiveness.
Johnny Case is a hard-working attorney who meets Julia on his holiday to the Adirondacks (which we’re told about, we don’t get to see them meet). They fall in love and the film starts as he is brought to Julia’s home, a gigantic multi-level mansion with its own elevator! This is when he realizes that she’s the daughter of a very wealthy man. To Johnny’s credit, he remains true to his own goal: to make enough money by his own sweat and blood to earn an indefinite holiday and enjoy life. But Julia wants him to be subsumed into the familial lifestyle, a prisoner in a gilded cage that he may never escape. Julia’s wonky sister Linda is a Bohemian at heart, nostalgia and poetry sing her body electric. She supports and urges Johnny to make concessions with her sister, to give the engagement a chance to thrive before he sails away on his own. But of course, Linda and Johnny fall in love but just cannot bring themselves to reveal this conscious desire to each other...or themselves. When Julia finally denounces her love for Johnny, Linda packs her bags and races towards her future happiness.
Mary Astor plays Julia with a girlish naivete, her virgin innocence and healthy bank account something to be adored. She is able to imbue her character with this sense and sensibility before her true entitlements are revealed. Astor shades her character just enough that we don’t hate her in the final act but feel saddened by her rigid insistence: she’s definitely her father’s daughter. Robert Ames as Johnny Case plays such a straightforward and dependable character, he forgets to make him human: he’s a one-note paragon of good behavior. But it’s Ann Harding, nominated for an Academy Award for this role, that steals the film. She is the focus of conflicted feelings, depression and guilt and is given most of the dialogue to voice these concerns. She is also the literal focus of the film as she gets the close-ups! Her breathy pronouncements and swooning posture are overwrought, a merging of sound with the tropes of Silent Cinema, no doubt. She’s still adorable. Edward Horton makes an appearance as Linda’s compatriot in angst and he’s the humor when she needs it most. Overall, a solid cast that’s cast in the solid immovable typeface of the script.
Final Grade: (C)