Director Robert-Paul Dagon made only two films and it's not hard to see why. Apparently not content with taking as his subject one of the hoariest melodramas known to man - the one about the dissolute mother who turns up just as the daughter who has never known her is about to marry well; Oscar Wilde was mining this particular lode at the end of the nineteenth century and even he got there a couple of hundred years late - he proceeds to shoot in in as undistinguished a manner as possible. The only three 'names' in the cast - Gabrielle Dorziat, Jules Berry and Jean Debucourt - clearly took the money and ran whilst the rest of the cast remained unknown. If it's on TV and Mr Bean is on the other side it's gonna be a tough choice.
2 Reviews
The prodigal mother
dbdumonteil8 December 2008
The story takes place in the young jet set milieu.The ball,which opens the movie,shows a posh world.
Two sentimental young people are about to marry cause if money cannot buy happiness and if it can't buy love either,it contributes to them nevertheless .
The girl thinks that her mother is dead but she is not.Worse,her soon-to-be mother-in-law (Gabrielle Dorziat) discovers it and as the prodigal mother is a rambler and a gambler,whose fortune quickly dissipates ,helped by a good-to-nothing old beau (Jules Berry). "Your mother does not like me" says the bewildered fiancée to her rather indolent squeeze .
Melodramas can be great ,even if they are like this one rather reactionary.This one is not :the scene when the mother meets again her daughter (she passes herself off as her mother's good friend) was filmed so many times-Bette Davis notably- it can't generate any interest .
Two sentimental young people are about to marry cause if money cannot buy happiness and if it can't buy love either,it contributes to them nevertheless .
The girl thinks that her mother is dead but she is not.Worse,her soon-to-be mother-in-law (Gabrielle Dorziat) discovers it and as the prodigal mother is a rambler and a gambler,whose fortune quickly dissipates ,helped by a good-to-nothing old beau (Jules Berry). "Your mother does not like me" says the bewildered fiancée to her rather indolent squeeze .
Melodramas can be great ,even if they are like this one rather reactionary.This one is not :the scene when the mother meets again her daughter (she passes herself off as her mother's good friend) was filmed so many times-Bette Davis notably- it can't generate any interest .
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