 |
Available on DVD! To buy, click on link(s) below and help keep this site afloat (commissions earned) |
|
Always make sure of DVD-compatibility!!!
|
|
|
 |
|
British high society: At some charity event, Mrs Cheyney (Norma Shearer)
and Lord Dilling (Basil Rathbone) are having a rowe, as usual, though it
seems obvious that they are made for each other and also terribly in love
with each other - but then she's engaged to overly boring Lord Elton
(Herbert Bunston), while he is simply too proud to marry him instead.
Eventually he even gives up his pride and does propose to her, but still,
she turns him down, claiming he knows too little about her to be serious. ...
and there is actually a lot more to know about her, like the fact that she
isn't even a rich widow from Australia at all but a member of a gang of
thieves led by Charles (George Barraud), the man who poses as her butler.
Sure, she wants to give up her life of crime, but Charles, her fatherly
friend, can persuade her otherwise without the least bit of force. A few
days later, when they are all staying at Mrs Webley's (Maude Turner
Gordon) house, Dilling actually witnesses Mrs Cheyney stealing a priceless
pearl necklace from their hostess, and confronts her with his knowledge.
However, as troubling as this knowledge might be for him, he can't make
himself spill the beans on her - to a point when she herself calls the
hostess and the other guests to give herself up. Even then, Dilling tries
to shield Mrs Cheyney, even if it ruins his own reputation, but to no
avail, her mind is set up. And once she has given herself up, Charles does
the same, since he has promised to stick with her to the end. When Mrs
Webley wants to call the authorities though, she is held back by Lord
Elton, who has written Mrs Cheyney a loveletter that contains quite a few
compromising details about Mrs Webley and all of her guests, so in the
end, instead of handing Mrs Cheyney and Charles over to the authorities,
Mrs Webley and company offer her large sums of money to give up the letter
and disappear from their lives forever. Mrs Cheyney drives a hard bargain
and in the end receives a check for an enormous amount of money, only to
then tear it up in order to reconcile with everyone - which works greatly,
too, and in the end she even gets the boy ... no, not Lord Elton, Lord
Dilling is the lucky one. Norma Shearer and Basil Rathbone
shine as the lead characters in this movie, and they do have some
chemistry between them as well as some quite pointed dialogue as well .
and that's about as good as the movie gets, as the rest of the cast,
especially Herbert Bunston and Shearer's fiancé and George Barraud as her
butler/fatherly friend deserve little praise, the film's plot as such and
especially the ending are a little too far-fetched to really work, and the
direction is pretty much as uninspired and stagey as can be, something
that can only in parts be attributed to the fact that sound-filmmaking in
1929 was still a relatively new process that at least in the beginning
limited filmmakers in their ways to express themselves. In all, a
disappointment, but at least one with two great leads.
|
amazon.co.uk
amazon.de
eThaiCD.com
find The Last of Mrs. Cheyney at adultvideouniverse.com
