I'll stick to the performances and the filming here, rather than to the storyline.
First of all, I don't think I have ever seen a film from 1929 that is better and more naturally acted, with the microphone picking up every little vocal nuance in a way that we did not get used to entirely until at least, say, 1933 or 1934. The scenes are rarely visually static, but this is basically a filmed play, so there isn't much camera action necessary. Every one of the actors is better, or at least more natural-sounding and -looking, than in almost any other 1929 film I've seen, and there are never any of those pregnant pauses or moments when the cameraman doesn't seem to know what to do to extricate his camera from one scene and go on to the next. Maybe the actor playing the Puritanical relative is a bit on the old-fashioned side where speaking is concerned, but the man he is playing is something of a social-religious fanatic, so he gets away with it. But all four leads, plus the children (especially Tom Brown as the son) are superb throughout. I expected this of Colbert, Huston and Ruggles, but was really surprised at just HOW GOOD they were. Add to them, the not-much-seen Betty Garde as Ruggles' illicit paramour and Joyce's best friend, and it is just a wonderful quartet. Garde, whose major career was on stage, radio and early television (I seemed to see her every time I turned on the TV back then), wasn't really attractive enough for film and far too tall for most leading men at 5'10", and my only real recollection of her in movies is from two decades later, when she played the mother-dominated nurse who helps villain Richard Conte escape from his hospital confinement in CRY OF THE CITY, a vivid performance of a hopelessly unhappy large and older woman. But, here, she is just delightful as a floozie with both brains and heart, and one whom we are sure will end up snagging Charlie Ruggles for good after our part of the story ends. Ruggles is superb, but wasn't he always? Huston, who to me was one of America's five or six greatest STAR character actors of the first half of the last century (the others being Muni, Tracy, March, and the Barrymore brothers) is fine here, although his role is not quite as demanding as many others he essayed in the early talkies. But the standout is Colbert, who is simply born to act on the screen, so natural is her delivery and appearance at every moment. She has a near-cello voice and it is captured beautifully in 1929, while some other very fine actresses were still semi-screeching to be heard properly. If anything - and this is really quite amazing for 1929 - the film is underacted by all but perhaps Tom Brown, but hey the kid was only 16 and would be around for another 50 years. Yes, the story is old-fashioned, but it is not maudlin. I was very happy with, and admittedly surprised by, just how well this whole film came over, as it is superior to the vast majority of films from this very confined era that are better-remembered today.
Review of The Lady Lies
