It is strange that so many opinions are depreciating this "small" comedy/drama, which if only because of its very unconventionally sad "unhappy-end" is above the usual standard and very much worth-seeing.
Up to its ending, the film has been a fairly skilful, though simply plotted, romantic comedy. A bittersweet mixture of witty cynicism and real emotions, it is actually not wholly unworthy of the great Lubitsch, who might have enjoyed handling such a story - it has common points with Trouble in Paradise which the master of wits filmed the following year. Which is not to say this film can compare to a Lubitsch one - it doesn't, but extremely few can. Just that it is quite enjoyable and more interesting than it could appear at first. Trevor, a charmingly brilliant crook and blackmailer, lives an easy and more or less settled life in Paris. However it soon appears it is not a really happy one, as in the past he has been forced to abandon his country and friends, his youth ideals, and his hopes for a life more worthy of his own self-esteem. All this, which he had made his best to bury as deep inside himself as feasible, is suddenly brought to the light of a romance with a young rich heiress, Mary - which starts as a natural infatuation with youth, charm and beauty, but evolves into something much more deeply involving for both. It so happens that Mary is really more than a conventional "beautiful lady", which is confirmed when he resigns himself to expose to her what kind of a man he actually is. Far from being appalled and repulsed, she immediately decides that his present and past are irrelevant, as they both know that deep inside he is a very different person and that together they will leave all that behind. Is this just the naivety of a pampered and optimistic gilded youth who has never experienced that life is slightly more complicated? One may be tempted to discard it as credulous - but in this case there are actually good reasons to believe that she is right on all accounts. He, at his core, is a good person, without any deep flaws likely to reappear in a new life. She feels it, knows it. But interestingly, she resorts to a very different if not opposite argument - and thus shows that her good looks might have deceived Trevor and viewers alike into underestimating her : she says that she is glad Trevor has a flawed past, and that she would love him less if he had been like her fiancee a good, uninteresting person with no experience of the hardships and complexities of life. Certainly not the way of thinking of your usual hare-brained heiress in many such films. This is part of what makes the ending so bitter and poignant. Trevor lets himself be convinced - in truth, too easily - by his pathetic former lover Irene that this is all an illusion, that he will not be able to get rid of his past just like that and it will some day catch up with them and wreck their happiness and love. If Trevor has real flaws in this story, they are really a certain lack of courage and trust, in Mary and above all in himself, as well as a possibly misguided sense of honour. After a sleepless night of "tempest in a skull", Trevor finds the only morally noble solution - making himself appear as a complete heel to Mary, so as to break neatly their bond. Which succeeds, though we hope that she will see through his plot - she does not, and who could blame her? Therefore, the expected happy ending, the two lovers honeymooning on a cruiser, is cruelly sacrificed for an extremely downbeat alternative - which involves two diverging boats, united by unhappiness... On one bound back to America Mary, heartbroken and her illusions shattered, is going back to the conventionally dull and most probably not very happy life she had found some hope of escaping;. On another one bound to South Africa, Trevor is in the company of Irene, which he has accepted only by compassion and indifference henceforth to his own future. He is as heartbroken as Mary, and his hopes of redeeming his own life are even more shattered - it seems unlikely he will try again. The swamp is for him, forever. A very melodramatic ending? Possibly, but in a subdued - and very sad - way. It would have been much easier to reward the viewers' expectations of a happy ending. Much more banal as well, less interesting and memorable. And probably less true to real life. In this sense this early talkie is quite modern in its way. Credits remind us that it has been written by Herman Mankiewicz, older brother of Joseph and screenwriter of Citizen Kane. By the way this truly heroic sacrifice, making oneself appear as an unworthy, soulless and loveless egoist, as the only means to force your loved one to leave you for his own good, be it at the cost of your smitten heart and the sacrifice of your whole future happiness as well as redemption, strongly reminded me of another story which I could not put my finger on right away. With a little memory-searching I found out what it was : this is the basic argument at the end of George Cukor's film Camille with Garbo and Taylor, itself adapted from the play La dame aux camélias which also gave us the opera Traviata. What will be sublime tear-jerking melodrama in Camille is here handled rather subtly, without pathos, very low-key - in the following scene Trevor who is forced to leave Paris puts moodily his beloved books away into cases. I find it quite plausible that this melodramatic storyline element has also been used in a number of other plots of films and novels, actually. A few words about the setting and actors. The story takes place in Gay Paree and seems to present it in the usual vein, as a den - or haven/heaven - of debauchery. However by pre-code standards - or Lubitsch's... - it is pretty innocuous, no more hell than heaven. Debauchery does not go much beyond too many colourful cocktails and long nights of revelry and a few mild allusions such as one to postcards (this one originating from two couples of old Americans who seem so boringly respectable that they are unlikely candidates for extreme dissipation). Nightlife places of pleasure are limited to an admittedly dull tourist-oriented high-end restaurant, and the harmless typical bistro of Papa Jules. This is more the sweet idealized Paris of post-code comedies than the wild one of silent and pre-code movies. Overall this one, despite its scandal-oriented characters, is extremely short on risqué situations and dialogues - if it had been shot a few years later, the Hays Code people would probably have found little to object to in it. William Powell is very good in his role, as fluidly refined as ever, but able to convey his deep feelings behind the apparent flippancy of the "man of the world", as the title describes him with a nice double-entendre. Contrary to other opinions on his acting here, I feel that he is not still an actor in development - all his future persona (mannerisms included) is already there - his adaptation to the universe of talking pictures has been remarkably fast, in particular thanks to his rapid elocution. One can say mostly the same of the other actors, especially Guy Kibbee - about Carole Lombard later on. Wynne Gibson is the only one with a whiff of silent movie acting but she conveys rather well and movingly her unlikable and maudlin character. The film as a whole suffers fairly little of the drawbacks of early talkies, static acting and annoying sound-recording - one remnant is the sound of wood boards when Trevor and Mary are romantically walking on a Paris bridge at night. As to Carole Lombard, she is still only a star-in-waiting in a Powell vehicle. As other comments have noted, her hairdo and make-up make it difficult to recognize the radiant face with which she will soon illuminate other more noteworthy films in her career. During two-thirds of the film, Mary's character is not really fleshed out in any substantial way - this is one of the major weaknesses of the script, which makes it harder to understand why Trevor falls deeply for her. However, the well-written scene where Trevor reveals his true self to her completely belies the judgement of many, that Mary is a lightweight and fairly uninteresting role. In the latter part of this dialogue, Mary really takes over Trevor as the strongest character of the two : after his classical confession to her, she reacts in a quite unexpected manner. Not only does she sweep away his unfounded worries with a healthy dose of "let the past be the past", which shows her as much more mature than she appears and he believes. But she also actually welcomes his checkered past and possibly flawed personality, which contrary to her bland money-man fiancee make him a real person, the only kind of person she could really envisage to make her life with, actually. That is a strong statement - and the way Carole Lombard makes it credible announces the qualities of natural acting which will distinguish in her further career, and her later under-estimated capabilities to act serious roles beyond her talent for light-hearted comedy. Hail Carole, one of the greats in this no-sacred-monster register, with Margaret Sullavan and Barbara Stanwyck.
Up to its ending, the film has been a fairly skilful, though simply plotted, romantic comedy. A bittersweet mixture of witty cynicism and real emotions, it is actually not wholly unworthy of the great Lubitsch, who might have enjoyed handling such a story - it has common points with Trouble in Paradise which the master of wits filmed the following year. Which is not to say this film can compare to a Lubitsch one - it doesn't, but extremely few can. Just that it is quite enjoyable and more interesting than it could appear at first. Trevor, a charmingly brilliant crook and blackmailer, lives an easy and more or less settled life in Paris. However it soon appears it is not a really happy one, as in the past he has been forced to abandon his country and friends, his youth ideals, and his hopes for a life more worthy of his own self-esteem. All this, which he had made his best to bury as deep inside himself as feasible, is suddenly brought to the light of a romance with a young rich heiress, Mary - which starts as a natural infatuation with youth, charm and beauty, but evolves into something much more deeply involving for both. It so happens that Mary is really more than a conventional "beautiful lady", which is confirmed when he resigns himself to expose to her what kind of a man he actually is. Far from being appalled and repulsed, she immediately decides that his present and past are irrelevant, as they both know that deep inside he is a very different person and that together they will leave all that behind. Is this just the naivety of a pampered and optimistic gilded youth who has never experienced that life is slightly more complicated? One may be tempted to discard it as credulous - but in this case there are actually good reasons to believe that she is right on all accounts. He, at his core, is a good person, without any deep flaws likely to reappear in a new life. She feels it, knows it. But interestingly, she resorts to a very different if not opposite argument - and thus shows that her good looks might have deceived Trevor and viewers alike into underestimating her : she says that she is glad Trevor has a flawed past, and that she would love him less if he had been like her fiancee a good, uninteresting person with no experience of the hardships and complexities of life. Certainly not the way of thinking of your usual hare-brained heiress in many such films. This is part of what makes the ending so bitter and poignant. Trevor lets himself be convinced - in truth, too easily - by his pathetic former lover Irene that this is all an illusion, that he will not be able to get rid of his past just like that and it will some day catch up with them and wreck their happiness and love. If Trevor has real flaws in this story, they are really a certain lack of courage and trust, in Mary and above all in himself, as well as a possibly misguided sense of honour. After a sleepless night of "tempest in a skull", Trevor finds the only morally noble solution - making himself appear as a complete heel to Mary, so as to break neatly their bond. Which succeeds, though we hope that she will see through his plot - she does not, and who could blame her? Therefore, the expected happy ending, the two lovers honeymooning on a cruiser, is cruelly sacrificed for an extremely downbeat alternative - which involves two diverging boats, united by unhappiness... On one bound back to America Mary, heartbroken and her illusions shattered, is going back to the conventionally dull and most probably not very happy life she had found some hope of escaping;. On another one bound to South Africa, Trevor is in the company of Irene, which he has accepted only by compassion and indifference henceforth to his own future. He is as heartbroken as Mary, and his hopes of redeeming his own life are even more shattered - it seems unlikely he will try again. The swamp is for him, forever. A very melodramatic ending? Possibly, but in a subdued - and very sad - way. It would have been much easier to reward the viewers' expectations of a happy ending. Much more banal as well, less interesting and memorable. And probably less true to real life. In this sense this early talkie is quite modern in its way. Credits remind us that it has been written by Herman Mankiewicz, older brother of Joseph and screenwriter of Citizen Kane. By the way this truly heroic sacrifice, making oneself appear as an unworthy, soulless and loveless egoist, as the only means to force your loved one to leave you for his own good, be it at the cost of your smitten heart and the sacrifice of your whole future happiness as well as redemption, strongly reminded me of another story which I could not put my finger on right away. With a little memory-searching I found out what it was : this is the basic argument at the end of George Cukor's film Camille with Garbo and Taylor, itself adapted from the play La dame aux camélias which also gave us the opera Traviata. What will be sublime tear-jerking melodrama in Camille is here handled rather subtly, without pathos, very low-key - in the following scene Trevor who is forced to leave Paris puts moodily his beloved books away into cases. I find it quite plausible that this melodramatic storyline element has also been used in a number of other plots of films and novels, actually. A few words about the setting and actors. The story takes place in Gay Paree and seems to present it in the usual vein, as a den - or haven/heaven - of debauchery. However by pre-code standards - or Lubitsch's... - it is pretty innocuous, no more hell than heaven. Debauchery does not go much beyond too many colourful cocktails and long nights of revelry and a few mild allusions such as one to postcards (this one originating from two couples of old Americans who seem so boringly respectable that they are unlikely candidates for extreme dissipation). Nightlife places of pleasure are limited to an admittedly dull tourist-oriented high-end restaurant, and the harmless typical bistro of Papa Jules. This is more the sweet idealized Paris of post-code comedies than the wild one of silent and pre-code movies. Overall this one, despite its scandal-oriented characters, is extremely short on risqué situations and dialogues - if it had been shot a few years later, the Hays Code people would probably have found little to object to in it. William Powell is very good in his role, as fluidly refined as ever, but able to convey his deep feelings behind the apparent flippancy of the "man of the world", as the title describes him with a nice double-entendre. Contrary to other opinions on his acting here, I feel that he is not still an actor in development - all his future persona (mannerisms included) is already there - his adaptation to the universe of talking pictures has been remarkably fast, in particular thanks to his rapid elocution. One can say mostly the same of the other actors, especially Guy Kibbee - about Carole Lombard later on. Wynne Gibson is the only one with a whiff of silent movie acting but she conveys rather well and movingly her unlikable and maudlin character. The film as a whole suffers fairly little of the drawbacks of early talkies, static acting and annoying sound-recording - one remnant is the sound of wood boards when Trevor and Mary are romantically walking on a Paris bridge at night. As to Carole Lombard, she is still only a star-in-waiting in a Powell vehicle. As other comments have noted, her hairdo and make-up make it difficult to recognize the radiant face with which she will soon illuminate other more noteworthy films in her career. During two-thirds of the film, Mary's character is not really fleshed out in any substantial way - this is one of the major weaknesses of the script, which makes it harder to understand why Trevor falls deeply for her. However, the well-written scene where Trevor reveals his true self to her completely belies the judgement of many, that Mary is a lightweight and fairly uninteresting role. In the latter part of this dialogue, Mary really takes over Trevor as the strongest character of the two : after his classical confession to her, she reacts in a quite unexpected manner. Not only does she sweep away his unfounded worries with a healthy dose of "let the past be the past", which shows her as much more mature than she appears and he believes. But she also actually welcomes his checkered past and possibly flawed personality, which contrary to her bland money-man fiancee make him a real person, the only kind of person she could really envisage to make her life with, actually. That is a strong statement - and the way Carole Lombard makes it credible announces the qualities of natural acting which will distinguish in her further career, and her later under-estimated capabilities to act serious roles beyond her talent for light-hearted comedy. Hail Carole, one of the greats in this no-sacred-monster register, with Margaret Sullavan and Barbara Stanwyck.