Produced and directed by Robert Z. Leonard. Copyright 23 April 1930 by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Distributing Corp. New York opening at the Capitol, 9 May 1930. U.S. release: 19 April 1930. 9 reels. 7,533 feet. 83½ minutes.SYNOPSIS: Wife revenges herself for her husband's philandering by having an affair herself.NOTES: Academy Award, Best Actress, Norma Shearer (defeating her own performance in Their Own Desire, as well as Greta Garbo in both Romance and Anna Christie, Nancy Carroll in The Devil's Holiday, Ruth Chatterton in Sarah and Son, and Gloria Swanson in The Trespasser).Also nominated for Best Picture (All Quiet on the Western Front was the winner), Best Directing (Lewis Milestone won for All Quiet on the Western Front), Best Writing (Frances Marion won for The Big House).Number eight in the 1930 Film Daily poll of U.S. film critics. Negative cost was $341,000. Shooting took 22 days. Net domestic rentals amounted to a tidy $676,000, leaving MGM $335,000 in the black — with overseas rentals still to come!COMMENT: Norma Shearer, did she deserve to win an Academy Award for the year's Best Actress? By the standards prevailing in 1930, maybe. In a 2017 judgment, definitely not. It's a staged performance, compounded of nine-tenths artifice and one-tenth genuine feeling or sympathy for the character.It's true, that Norma does improve as the film progresses, but even at her best, she nearly always comes across as the actress, rarely as the character. Her obviously contrived approach is way out of touch not only with today's methods, but even with most of the other players in the movie. Actually, it's Robert Montgomery who comes over most convincingly of all. What's more you can actually sense the seducer ticking away behind all the shallow party tricks. That's acting indeed! I also liked Chester Morris, whose portrayal is generally under- rated. He is a thick head certainly, but that's exactly what the character is. He makes the scene in which he spurns Shearer so realistic that you actually feel for her. This flow of audience sympathy by default to Jerry is entirely due to Morris' acting, not Shearer's.After a great start, in which he does the drunk act most realistically, Conrad Nagel settles down into his conventional "other man" impersonation, but we must commend Judith Wood who plays the unfortunate Dorothy, Tyler Brooke as the inveterate party clown, and especially slinky Mary Doran who makes her Janice-Doesn't-Mean- a- Thing a person to remember.Also worthy of note is screenwriter Zelda Sears who has given herself the part of Hannah, the querulous maid. Being actually on the set throughout, at Robert Z. Leonard's invitation, she actually contributed more to the script, especially the dialogue, than the credits seem to indicate. When not wanted on the set itself, she sat right next to Leonard from go to whoa!Lavishly produced, skillfully edited and directed with considerable expertise, "The Divorcée" only shows its age in a rather noisy Western Electric Noiseless Recording soundtrack. Said noiseless track hisses, splutters and crackles rather disconcertingly throughout the action, but especially in many moments of supposedly pure silence.

The dramas of the early sound era were often awkward, phoney-looking things. A lot of this has to do with the acting. Most actors were of course experienced in silent cinema, but a lot of players with stage experience had also been brought in as was deemed appropriate for "talkies". Silent screen acting tended to be over-the-top so that meaning could be expressed without words, and stage acting also tended to be over-the-top so that meaning could be expressed to people sitting in the back row. But this excessive style didn't really work in the more authentic setting of sound cinema. Of course, movie people weren't stupid; they were aware of what did and didn't work and the industry adapted quicker than is sometimes thought.And of course, there were some actors and actresses who simply seemed to get the hang of it straight away. Norma Shearer was among a small number who survived the transition from silents to talkies with her career completely intact. One thing Shearer had was a remarkable presence – she's able to project herself with just a simple gesture or pose, and in The Divorcée she's often standing with her shoulders slightly forward in understated aggression. And within this context she is able to give a restrained performance, conveying a great deal but with a degree of credibility that makes the drama seem more believable. Shearer deservedly won the Academy Award for her work here. Compare her to previous year's winner Mary Pickford in Coquette, a slice of ham from a bygone era, and you can see how much things have changed.Let's also take a look at the director Robert Z. Leonard. He's not too well remembered these days because he isn't deemed an auteur, but at the time he was among the forefront of Hollywood professionals. Two things in particular are worth noting about his style in The Divorcée. First is that he uses a lot of camera movement to really engage us in a scene (who says early sound films were static?), often using a noteworthy pan as a character appears. Secondly, he gives us an awful lot of the interplay between characters in simple wordless glances between them, for example the jealous look of Conrad Nagel when Shearer and Chester Morris announce their betrothal, or later a silent, spiteful exchange between Shearer and Mary Doran. There was a temptation for talkie directors to shoot things before the assembled actors as if for a stage play, but here Leonard is making subtle close-ups that cut across the action, and in so doing giving depth to the story outside of the dialogue.This picture is now often classified as a "pre-code" movie for its depiction of Shearer's promiscuity after she becomes the titular divorcée, although even by the standards of the day it's pretty tame. However, thanks to its fluid direction and naturalistic acting, it is nevertheless a movie that seems a few steps ahead of its time, and points towards the increasingly sophisticated sound cinema of the 1930s.

From Volume 2 of TCM Archive's Forbidden Hollywood Collection. Norma Shearer won the third Best Actress Oscar ever for her role as a young married woman who runs afoul of her husband (Chester Morris). The film does a shockingly good job exposing a nasty double standard. Morris cheats on Shearer. She's so angry that she ends up getting even with him by doing the same. But while he insists that his indiscretion means nothing, the moment he finds out about hers it's a "don't let the door hit you on the way out" type of situation. From there, Shearer vows to go on a sex binge. "From now on, the only man that my door is closed to is you!" she tells him. Best line ever. The first one I've ever submitted to IMDb (still unpublished as of this writing). Unfortunately, the film kind of pussies out at this point. Or at least Shearer does. She courts men, but she refuses to screw them. Turns out that open door was even more figurative than I thought. Of course, she eventually ends up back in Morris' arms, the butthole. Still, it's a very good movie, very well directed. And Shearer is outstanding.

It is funny how the film portrays love. In the beginning it shows the perfect relationship between Ted and Jerry in a rather comedy like fashion (e.g. as they are joking with the boy (their future kid?) who disturbs them in their love nest). Also they are talking to each other more like friends than sexual partners. At one point they kiss in front of the father and their friends, as if to prove, that their love has nothing to do with sexual desire. That's why, in my opinion, the first 20 minutes are rather dull: the relationship looks superficial.The drama kicks in with the twentieth minute when the sexual drive starts a life of its own after three years of marriage. With the sexual desire of Ted, suffering starts, and the film has its first brilliant scene: Jerry surprises Ted being embraced by a woman. Now the other side of Ted - who presumably was such a nice, perfect, asexual man - is shown: He got "plastered" one day and went to bed with another woman. For him it is the drive which made him to it, so he can say: "it is not a thing" in the sense that it is not himself, but the animal inside him that forced him to do it. So the modern question the movie rises is: how does a love relationship looks like, that isn't affected by infidelity? Can they arrive at a deeper, more honest form of love, that includes the sexual desire? The answer the movie gives, in my opinion, is no. Love and sexuality are different things. First of all the latter is associated with the parties, the booze, the jazz music, shortly a decadent, hedonistic lifestyle devoid of happiness. Secondly the somewhat lynchian scene with Dot, Jerry and Paul. It is obvious, that the relationship between Dot and Paul is neither love nor sexual - it is full of pity, guilt and reproaches. Nevertheless Jerry refers to it as a marriage worth saving. (Why? - fidelity itself is more important than love or sexuality?) In so far I think the film has a conservative touch after all. But the strength and self-confidence of the woman characters is way ahead of its time (even compared to the femme fatale of the film noir period, who were in some way or another evil by seducing the men)