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Very MGM mother-love early-talkie stuff, which one suspects Norma Shearer turned down. Charles MacArthur's screenplay at least makes its points swiftly and with a minimum of embarrassment, but the direction makes rather too much of having The First Lady of the American Theatre in every scene. Helen's key-lighting is just so, her dithering and pauses are all fluttery excess, and the makeup (innocent girl to demimonde-cocotte to hag) does half the acting for her. Not that she's an incompetent film actress -- she's quite good, and even sexy, in the following year's "A Farewell to Arms." It's just that this is the bathetic "Madame X"/"Stella Dallas" sort of nonsense that sets young actresses dreaming of Oscars before they even face the camera. In a very American bunch of supporting Parisians, Marie Prevost is sympathetic and welcome, Jean Hersholt is not the noble bore he often was, and Lewis Stone gets to be a most un-Judge Hardy-like count with a secret.
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