This high-power weeper is notable for its photography. Made shortly after sound arrived in movies, Born to Love has some interesting images courtesy of cinematographer John Mescall. Rapid pullbacks and moving close-ups often look like the camera was mounted on a square-wheeled dolly. When done at a less frantic pace, they're much smoother and easier on our eyes. Mescall's stationary camera images of London's celebration at the end of World War One , complete with an example of his tilted camera style, are the best images in the movie. Film buffs of pre-code talkies will get something out of this very dreary story.

Not uninteresting pre-Code soap suds, wherein Yankee nurse Bennett, in London (nice historical touch: a bus advertising "Chu Chin Chow") meets Captain Joel McCrea, they have a torrid romance and pledge their troth, and while carrying his child she hears he's dead. We know he's not--he's second-billed, and there's an hour to go--but she thinks he is, so she marries Paul Cavanagh on the rebound and we wait for the fireworks that will erupt when McCrea returns. Connie's histrionic- -she gets to love, yell, sob, scream, and put on a phony British accent, even though she's playing American--and Paul Stein's camera likes to linger on her overemoting. But Joel McCrea was certainly the personification of solid masculine American values circa 1918 or 1931, and his sincere underplaying nicely complements her overplaying. The screenplay doesn't hate her for having a child out of wedlock, and the happy ending isn't that happy. So, by 1931 standards, it's an adult movie. Just not a very good one.

They don't make 'em like this anymore. But the weeper genre was popular with the ladies once upon a time, and Bennett led the pack of martyrs. Her suffering in Born to Love is all the sadder because it could have been so easily avoided if she had just answered her husband's questions frankly and fully. But not Bennett. Her evasiveness followed by her unforgivably cruel words turned this kindly man's love for her into hate. But still, she didn't deserve what she got.Variety's reviewer wrote of the plot, "Constance Bennett is ruined again and has another baby" and "How the women love it, that sobbing stuff." Bennett's hand-wringing and heavy emoting was criticized, but I thought her acting was exactly how her character would respond to the shocks the script writers threw at her. Regardless, Variety saw the film's box-office potential, "Bennett isn't much of an actress here but still drawing as ever because of this story." Only a year after this huge hit, the drawing power of Bennett and stories like Born to Love would lose favor with fickle moviegoers, and she and her producers were unable to keep her career from sliding downhill until Topper reinvented her as a sophisticated comedienne.This was Joel McCrea's first (of 4) teamings with Bennett as well as his first major role. He's wonderful to watch and Bennett's undying love for him is believable. Cavanaugh is excellent and manages to be sympathetic even while being cold-hearted and vengeful.

Born to Love (1931) is rather silly but nevertheless is a good example of a candid treatment of divorce law before the Production Code of 1935 put a stop to serious treatment of divorce or of pre-marital sexuality. Stuck in a loveless marriage to Wilfred, a haughty English aristocrat, Doris causes Wilfred to believe she has committed adultery. The consequences to her are catastrophic.The plot is creaky and relies on numerous contrivances. The acting is highly forgettable. Nevertheless, the issues of fault-based divorce are important ones. The movie also concerns the conflict between marriage as an institution for love and fulfillment as opposed to a unemotional union designed for the mutual support of spouses and children. Needless to say, divorce law in the old days was much better adapted to the latter vision of marriage than the former.