La divorziata

A vivacious and happily married young woman discovers that her husband has been unfaithful. Embittered, she embarks on a brief affair of her own. Her marriage soon over, THE DIVORCEE quickly enters a downward spiral of escalating sexual promiscuity. How can she ever regain her husband & the happiness they once knew?

Norma Shearer won the Best Actress Oscar for her performance in this well-acted soap opera. Running the range of emotions, she is ably backed up by Chester Morris, Conrad Nagel & Robert Montgomery as the three very different men in her life. (Montgomery exhibits the sophisticated charm which quite shortly would make him one of the biggest stars at MGM.) Zelda Sears, a top writer at the Studio, has the role of Hannah the maid - and she gets some of the best lines.

The very elastic morality of the plot shows the pre-Production Code status of the film, while, oddly, the twin beds in the bedroom of Shearer & Morris point out that not all the restrictions of the initial Hays period had completely died away.

In 1930, talkies were still in their infancy in Hollywood & audio awkwardness was common in many studio's output. At MGM, Norma Shearer's brother Douglas was Recording Director and his department learned their new lessons quickly. Look at the opening scene in THE DIVORCEE, set in the large living room of a mountain lodge. Notice the action & dialogue going on at various levels - with the radio playing `Singing In The Rain' in the background - and it's easy to see that MGM had mastered the mysteries of the microphone.