One More River

Fleeing her husband's violence, Lady Clare returns to England and befriends a young man, Tony, whom she meets aboard ship. Her husband files for divorce and accuses her in court of adultery. Her defence depends on saying what he did to her, and in a court of that period saying it also condemns her. The film is not interested in marital drama. It is interested in whose word a court will hear: it shows directly how divorce law boxed a woman in, and the hearing in the final section works almost as a document. The form is studio drama: a ship, country houses, a courtroom and long speeches. The scenes are wide and orderly. James Whale directed, from John Galsworthy's last novel. He was making Frankenstein and The Invisible Man in this period; this is one of the rare occasions on which he stepped outside genre into straight social drama. The film arrived in the months when the Hays Code began to be enforced strictly, and the fact that violence inside a marriage can only be conveyed by implication shows how much of the subject was sayable at all. Diana Wynyard plays Clare and Frank Lawton plays Tony, with Mrs. Patrick Campbell in the cast. Who it is for: viewers who like thirties Hollywood dramas on English subjects and courtroom scenes. Who it is not for: anyone expecting directness. The central matter is never stated aloud, and to modern eyes that silence weakens the film.