The year 1930 was a pretty interesting year for MGM actress Norma Shearer as she became one of the very few people to be up for the Oscar for Best Actor/Actress for two different movies (and thus beating herself as she won for THE Divorcée).
The story of THEIR OWN DESIRE is in its bare bones, a melodrama without MGM's excesses and an experiment in sound reflecting the ghost of silent pictures. The movie opens with a crucial event: Henry Marlett (Lewis Stone) is leaving the family in a shocking way he is divorcing his current wife (Belle Bennett) for another lady, a Ms. Beth Cheever (Helen Millard). Norma Shearer plays the temperamental daughter Lucia "Lally" who can't stand to see her family be separated by this occurrence and grows estranged from him. She soon after meets and falls in love with a young man, played by Robert Montgomery, who happens to be Ms.Cheever's son. Mrs. Marlett of course is outraged at their relationship and teeters on suicide which temporarily separates Jack from Lally, but not for long: they do meet one night in what seems to be a clandestine elopement, and are caught in a raging storm. To the world they have drowned, but her father rushes to find them and bring them back to safety. The film ends as Lally and Jack are back together again.
Shearer and Montgomery work well as a romantic couple and would be re-teamed again on two occasions, on PRIVATE LIVES from 1931 and RIPTIDE, from 1934. Here, though, both display a frank youthfulness to their interpretation they could easily pass for nineteen, which is what their characters portray. Shearer especially is good in her scenes and doesn't totally resort to the posturing that was common of the actors making the transition from silent to talkies, although the moving scene as she wavers in and out of consciousness after the storm, cradling Montgomery's head and half-praying has a silent film quality which regardless, holds well. As does the lovely moment when Shearer and Stone reconcile there is a genuine, emotional moment that without too much exposition neatly ties the story at its conclusion.
THEIR OWN DESIRE has a clunky quality that comes from the type of transition from scene to scene and its script implies more than it states, but nevertheless this is a good movie to sit back and enjoy for a little more than an hour and watch the rising leads play exuberant, privileged young things from the Roaring Twenties.
The story of THEIR OWN DESIRE is in its bare bones, a melodrama without MGM's excesses and an experiment in sound reflecting the ghost of silent pictures. The movie opens with a crucial event: Henry Marlett (Lewis Stone) is leaving the family in a shocking way he is divorcing his current wife (Belle Bennett) for another lady, a Ms. Beth Cheever (Helen Millard). Norma Shearer plays the temperamental daughter Lucia "Lally" who can't stand to see her family be separated by this occurrence and grows estranged from him. She soon after meets and falls in love with a young man, played by Robert Montgomery, who happens to be Ms.Cheever's son. Mrs. Marlett of course is outraged at their relationship and teeters on suicide which temporarily separates Jack from Lally, but not for long: they do meet one night in what seems to be a clandestine elopement, and are caught in a raging storm. To the world they have drowned, but her father rushes to find them and bring them back to safety. The film ends as Lally and Jack are back together again.
Shearer and Montgomery work well as a romantic couple and would be re-teamed again on two occasions, on PRIVATE LIVES from 1931 and RIPTIDE, from 1934. Here, though, both display a frank youthfulness to their interpretation they could easily pass for nineteen, which is what their characters portray. Shearer especially is good in her scenes and doesn't totally resort to the posturing that was common of the actors making the transition from silent to talkies, although the moving scene as she wavers in and out of consciousness after the storm, cradling Montgomery's head and half-praying has a silent film quality which regardless, holds well. As does the lovely moment when Shearer and Stone reconcile there is a genuine, emotional moment that without too much exposition neatly ties the story at its conclusion.
THEIR OWN DESIRE has a clunky quality that comes from the type of transition from scene to scene and its script implies more than it states, but nevertheless this is a good movie to sit back and enjoy for a little more than an hour and watch the rising leads play exuberant, privileged young things from the Roaring Twenties.