...and I mean that in a double sense. First there is the scenario which is a traditional love triangle. Two young girls meet in a "divorce colony" in Paris and become childhood friends. It's a place run by nuns where children of well-to-do divorced parents are left so that the parents can get on with their lives. Sometimes the parents even came back to visit. One day the friends encounter a rich boy who has scaled the colony wall. They promise to remember each other and he departs.
The three grow up to be Esther Ralston, Clara Bow, and Gary Cooper. Cooper is rich, Ralston has become rich and Bow is looking to become rich. The best way for her to do that is to marry Cooper who is in love with Ralston. However Cooper marries Bow after a drunken one night stand which he doesn't remember. Needless to stay things do not go smoothly and none of the principals are happy. This ultimately leads to a surprising but powerful ending with Bow giving one of her best performances. The popular moral of the story was quite clear. Marry for love and not for money or there will be consequences. But then of course it's the consequences that the mostly female audience came to see. After all CHILDREN OF DIVORCE is a 1920s "chick flick".
1927 was Clara Bow's biggest year as a box office star with IT!, WINGS, and this film among others. This was Gary Cooper's first big role and although considered miscast at the time, his performance has improved with age because of who he became. In fact this is classic Cooper although he's younger (26) then we're used to seeing him. Clara was romantically involved with Cooper at the time and lobbied for him to get the part. Esther Ralston is forgotten today but she was a big star in the late 1920s under contract to Paramount at over $1,250 a week. She was in PETER PAN (1924) and OLD IRONSIDES (1926).
Also in the cast is Hedda Hopper in a small role as Bow's mother. This is before she became celebrated as the gossip columnist famous for her hats. The pleasant surprise is how good the principal performances are considering the material. The Scottish born director Frank Lloyd had been around since the early days of silent movies (his 1917 A TALE OF TWO CITIES deserves to be restored and released) and he would go on to direct the Oscar winners CAVALCADE (1933) and MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY (1935). However this project wasn't his cup of tea so an uncredited Josef von Sternberg was brought in to tidy things up.
The other aspect of this being better than it has any right to be has to do with the restoration of the film. The original camera negative had been deposited at The Library Of Congress and a fine grain master copy was created in 1969 but parts of the movie were already beginning to deteriorate. By the turn of the century restoration technology had improved dramatically and after 7 months of laborious work using the best of both sources, this new digital version was created and it looks gorgeous. I'm one of those old school silent film enthusiasts who prefers DVDs to Blu-Rays as the latter gives us too much detail and the contrast always seems to be an issue.
However with this Flicker Alley release you can have your cake and eat it too as it contains both formats. The score by the Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra is also first rate. An ideal vehicle for Flicker Alley's 50th release, this is for all silent film fans. It should be pointed out that this is one of the last projects made with the help of Film Preservation Associates and Blackhawk Films head David Shepard who died earlier this year. He was one of the most important figures in silent film preservation and will be greatly missed...For more reviews visit The Capsule Critic.
