This film comes across as stilted and dated in the language and delivery of the lines. There are definitely subtleties to the performances that are part of the break from a stage based and overplayed approach to acting that was more common in the early 1930s but this film shows the shift from that sort of “canned” acting to “melodrama” that will dominate the 40’s and 50’s.
The stage based approach is one where the actors wear and say their emotions all on their chest, nothing is kept internal, all emotional thoughts are conveyed to the audience.
The film is definitely challenging in its subject matter; the inconvenience of divorce and the result of hasty marriage, especially when a child is involved. Given the fact that it’s the 1930’s you can see how scandalous the film is, however, it also shows a bit of the social attitude shift that is occurring in the 30’s already because audiences were receptive to it. Especially due to the Great Depression, a lot of the films in the latter half of the 30’s show a society that is questioning the strict social mores of the 20’s as people were pushed to the edges of survival and questioned social structures in such fragile and desperate times.
1:32:06 - Laurel turns her back away from her father at a moment of great emotional height. This sort of movement is a staple of melodrama and will be adopted later by television soaps, with characters constantly turning their backs on the others in the room at great emotional height and the camera coming around to see their reaction while also looking at the reaction of the character they turned their back on in the background.
Barbara Stanwyck is great a wishy washy woman. It’s really interesting how women are always portrayed as indecisive subject to emotional outbursts and quick changes of the mind that yield stress and contribute to their downfall. We also see the age gap that is very important in society at this time: how older women soon fall into a black pit of no more happiness, living vicariously through their children.
The film doesn’t do a whole lot visually and honestly is a little boring if not for the riveting inherent conflict at the center of a custody dispute.
Hollywood is constructing artificiality at this point in movie history. They’re delicately bringing reality back into cinema as it was eradicated during the 1930’s.