"Lady of Secrets" is a film that really surprised me. This is because its plot seems right out of the Pre-Code era. However, surprisingly, censors allowed the movie to be shown as is...even though the plot involves premarital sex and an illegitimate baby. Why is this surprising? Because after July, 1934 films were heavily sanitized with the new Production Code and things such as adultery, homosexuality, premarital sex and the like were supposedly taboo!
Celia (Ruth Chatterton) and Joan (Marian Marsh) are supposedly sisters. However, later in the film there is a lengthy flashback where you learn that Celia is in fact Joan's mother! It seems that Celia was in love with a nice young man (Lloyd Nolan) but her manipulative father destroyed the relationship. And, because the father was such an awful man with political ambitions, he forced Celia to raise the baby as her sister...and kept the illegitimacy to herself.
The other plot involves Joan and her becoming engaged with a man (Otto Kruger) after having a falling out with her boyfriend. The problem is that she doesn't love her fiance and Celia knows she must step in to try to stop this wedding. The problem is that in order to keep the family secret that Joan is NOT Celia's sister, the nasty family patriarch (Lionel Atwill) has Celia committed!! Can she possibly escape to stop the wedding?!
This plot is right out of a soap opera...and this really isn't a complaint. This is because while it could all come off as silly and cliched, it was handled so well that it works. The acting is lovely (particularly by Chatterton, Lionel Atwill and Kruger) and the film looks really lovely--with exceptional cinematography and direction. My only complaint is that in hindsight I think the film should have made the flashback a bit longer and the first portion a bit shorter, as it was not nearly as interesting. Still, it's well worth seeing and is very well made.
Celia (Ruth Chatterton) and Joan (Marian Marsh) are supposedly sisters. However, later in the film there is a lengthy flashback where you learn that Celia is in fact Joan's mother! It seems that Celia was in love with a nice young man (Lloyd Nolan) but her manipulative father destroyed the relationship. And, because the father was such an awful man with political ambitions, he forced Celia to raise the baby as her sister...and kept the illegitimacy to herself.
The other plot involves Joan and her becoming engaged with a man (Otto Kruger) after having a falling out with her boyfriend. The problem is that she doesn't love her fiance and Celia knows she must step in to try to stop this wedding. The problem is that in order to keep the family secret that Joan is NOT Celia's sister, the nasty family patriarch (Lionel Atwill) has Celia committed!! Can she possibly escape to stop the wedding?!
This plot is right out of a soap opera...and this really isn't a complaint. This is because while it could all come off as silly and cliched, it was handled so well that it works. The acting is lovely (particularly by Chatterton, Lionel Atwill and Kruger) and the film looks really lovely--with exceptional cinematography and direction. My only complaint is that in hindsight I think the film should have made the flashback a bit longer and the first portion a bit shorter, as it was not nearly as interesting. Still, it's well worth seeing and is very well made.