Divorce of Lady X is a screwball comedy that captures the basic screwball formula but fails to be actually funny.Olivier plays the staid guy while Oberon plays the wacky dame who disrupts his life. This leads to mistaken identities and general chaos.It's a formula that worked great in Bringing Up Baby, but fails here. There are a number of reasons. The direction is static, often revealing its origins as a stage play. Olivier is stiff, and Oberon tries to hard in what was to become known many years later as the manic pixie role.While many screwball comedies take their time getting their stars from hate to love, Lady X jumps the gun. This is particularly problematic because Oberon's character is genuinely awful, manipulative and self centered, and she never achieves the charming playfulness necessary to make that seem cute. Meanwhile, Olivier is a bitter misogynist. And yes, terrible people can fall in love, but it's still not convincing here.The mistaken identity part is a good idea but is completely unpersuasive, requiring Olivier to be dumb as a box and Oberon to reach an almost sociopathic level of scheming.Screwball comedies rely on charm and chemistry, as in Bringing Up Baby or It Happened One Night. Here the leads have iffy chemistry (they did better later on with Wuthering Heights) and not a whole lot of charm (at least by American standards; perhaps charm just isn't a British thing?).Yes, it's got big stars, but it's an old creaky movie that simply isn't all that good.

"The Divorce of Lady X" is a lovely color film produced by Alexander Korda--a man who had a great history producing films in the UK and US. However, compared to many of Korda's other great films, this one comes up a bit average. It has a great idea but something about it kept it from being a bit better.The film begins in a horrible London fog. It's so foggy that folks can't get home and a hotel is totally booked. The last person to get a room, Everard (Laurence Olivier), is dead tired and miffed when the management asks him to share his suite since there are so many looking for rooms. Despite this, a very pushy and determined woman, Leslie (Merle Oberon), is able to finagle a bed in his room--and here is complications arise. He thinks she's a married woman and the next day, a man comes to hire him (as he's a barrister--that's a lawyer to us Americans) to sue his wife for divorce--and the woman the new client describes sounds EXACTLY like the woman who just spent the night with him! What's he to do? He's initially afraid that he's about to be named a co-respondent but later it's more complicated when he thinks that he's falling in love with this woman--a woman he thinks has been married four times already!I nearly gave the movie a 7, so I did like it. However, sometimes I really thought they made Oberon's character too obnoxious and unlikable. Additionally, why Olivier's character would want to marry her is perplexing considering she's so obnoxious, manipulative AND he thinks she's been married many times already. Add to this a ridiculous courtroom scene at the very end, it just kept me wishing they'd edited or re-written the thing a bit.

The plot of "The Divorce of Lady X" is a silly confection of misunderstandings among the London upper crust which cries out for dance interludes by Fred and Ginger. We have the crusty grandfather, a judge, with an impertinent butler; the screwball granddaughter and the stuffy lawyer at whom she sets her cap; a dotty peer; a harassed hotel manager; the de rigueur beauty parlour scene; and the eclaircissement at a stately home where a hunt is meeting.That is almost the only non-foggy exterior in a story shot in Natalie Kalmus's three-strip Technicolor. It was in its infancy in the UK: luxury hotel suites and posh flats glow in soft, rich tones. (Olivier: 'Where shall we meet? Savoy, Embassy, Claridges?')Korda had got the British industry over the longueurs of early 'teacup drama' in talkies, and the film is quietly but fluently piloted by Hollywood's Tim Whelan. It is stagy neither in blocking nor in the delivery of lines, though the cast other than Oberon (Mrs Korda) are West End veterans.Merle is skittish and fretfully British, posing as 'the wickedest woman in the world'- 'four husbands in five years and two adventures'. Binnie Barnes as the genuine adventuress was one of Britain's first Atlantic movie commuters, and sounds American: her inclusion is Korda's nod to his partners in United Artists and the US market.But the film's fascination, Technicolor apart, is to watch Laurence Olivier on the brink of supremacy: his great voice plangent or whispering, his impatience poking through. It was his last light comic role (unless you count "The Prince and the Showgirl") and he can do it asleep. He is ready for his Hollywood purple patch and the transmogrification to Shakespearean king of Britflicks which would ensue. Here he's predominantly moody and reflective, or peppery. His court outburst against the hypocrisy of modern woman (see the post below for a verbatim transcript) seems heartfelt, however; it gains piquancy from our knowing what heartache Vivien Leigh would give him. Ralph Richardson's bumbling and havering are a good counterpoint to Larry's crispness.Miklos Rozsa, then 30, was a compatriot of Korda. His sprightly score includes Gershwin pastiches. He too would soon take off for Hollywood. Unlike Larry, he stayed there..

Spoilers Ahead Weak and tiresome story of wealthy woman and a conceited barrister who meet because she needs a room on a foggy night. The woman deceives the barrister telling him she is married when she is not and she thinks she is quite clever. She enlists acquaintances to help her with this gag and of course they all find this nonsense hilarious. Too bad the audience won't! Then, as you might have suspected, the barrister and the woman fall madly in love.Even Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon with their high brow acting techniques can't bring any life to this muddled and insipid film. 70/100.