Perfectly adorable

Am I Missing Something?

I gave this film a 9 out of 10, because it was exactly what I expected it to be.

It is a whirlwind of delight --- attractive actors, stunning couture, spectacular sets and outrageous parties.

Lally (Norma Shearer) is happy. However, her world is turned upside down when her father (Lewis Stone) leaves her mother and remarries. She is now completely sour about love. Unexpectedly, however, she later meets Jack (Robert Montgomery) and is smitten with him...only to learn that she is the son of her father's new wife!! Naturally, this sort of plot is practically impossible to believe and the viewer will need to force themselves to just watch it and suspend their sense of disbelief. If you do, you'll find it a very watchable film BUT also a very mushy and old fashioned one as well. The acting and script are a bit over the top...but the ending is pleasant and the film pretty good for 1929. Certainly not one of Shearer's or Montgomery's best but worth seeing if you are a fan.

The Amendment giving women the right to vote was only nine years old when this movie was made. It sure shows. I'm not a big feminist (is any male, really?), but I was grinding my teeth whenever the question, "Oh, Darling, won't you be mine?" was asked. Today, it's a quaint notion, but at that time, the idea that a man could own a woman was accepted without any raised eyebrows. I found the love affair between the two leads simply not credible; it had no traction. One couldn't imagine happening today what the Shearer character decides with respect to her new lover -- and we're seemingly so much more sophisticated these days. Ah, 'tis a queer, ironic world. A technical note: If the couple was on Lake Michigan when the storm blew up, somebody needed to tell the author that there just ain't that many islands in the lake, and none within an easy row or swim. A little reminiscent of Puccini's opera "Manon Lescaut," the final scene of which takes place in the "Louisiana desert."

Norma Shearer and Robert Montgomery - a match made in beauty heaven (at the start of his career Montgomery would have complimented any actress).I just love the young Norma Shearer. She wasn't always long suffering and stately ("Marie Antoinette" and "The Women"). The young Norma was happy, madcap, witty with an infectious laugh and a very natural acting ability. She had great charm - something that you don't see much in today's actresses. Being married to MGM's boy wonder (Irving Thalberg) didn't do any harm but I truly believe her own ability would have made her a big star on her own.Norma plays Lally, a bright young girl who seems to have the perfect family. Then her father announces he is leaving her mother after 23 years of marriage for Mrs. Cheever - a woman Lally never liked . Lally's world is shattered.Her mother is inconsolable and Lally decides she is through with her father. On a holiday to Lake Michigan with her mother, she meets Jack (Robert Montgomery) and there is an instant attraction.With the haunting song "Blues in the Night" as a background, events take place. Belle Bennett, whose big success was the 1925 version of "Stella Dallas" and with some of the hammiest acting I have ever seen, plays Lally's mother.Lally then discovers that Jack's mother is the woman her father left her mother for. A bit of the movie is taken up with "shall we be together or shall we part". Norma's emotional acting is wonderful and gives the film a higher standard than the plot, with other less capable actors, would.Of course there is the happy ending but not before some exciting action sequences, involving a nasty storm and the phrase "missing - presumed drowned".

I watched and enjoyed this old first of the talkies. I it always cool for me to think of what life must have been prior to the depression and all of todays discoveries and new way of life. My mother was born in 1921, so I think of her life then. She would have been eight years old at this time. The cars , the actors, the dress is very nice and wonderfully done. I watch quite a lot of these old movies of this era, most were still silent at this point. This must have been one of the first of the 'talkies'. Just think what it was like to have no TV but to basically go to the movies for all you watched including news reals. It must've been great living in these days.