The sight of 75 year old May Robson running towards the door, then away from it, as if she was 30-something is certainly a sight to behold. She's playing a role I'm surprised that they didn't later re-do for Marjorie Main, a feisty, ill mannered aristocrat, once a great lady, now reduced to running a hotel in Vienna where fellow disgraced members of the old guard come to rub shoulders with the tacky nuevo riche, gauche Americans and other sorts of social climbers.
Fallen aristocrats gather together for a reunion, and the possibility of the arrival of John Barrymore's grand duke has stirred up the rumor mill. His great lover, Diana Wynard, has remained wealthy by marrying prominent psychoanalyst Frank Morgan, and along with her husband attends the reunion where the police are on the watch for Barrymore's arrival. Morgan, closely watching his wife, encourages a reunion with Barrymore, using his psychological mumbo jumbo to manipulate her.
Grand and sophisticated, this is an excellent adaptation of Robert Emmet Sherwood's hit play, not as well known as the other big screen adaptions of a play ("Dinner at Eight", "Cavalcade", popular vehicles for Barrymore and Wynard respectively that year), but definitely should be. A great scene has delusional formerly powerful people and their servants greeting Barrymore (now reduced to working as a cab driver elsewhere) as if he was still in power, including his one time valer Eduardo Cianelli.
A fabulous ensemble directed by Sidney Franklin plays out the comic drama and is highlighted by Una Merkel as an audacious American socialite patient of Morgan's and Henry Travers as his life loving father. Absolutely charming in every way, and slyly mocking the outdated old European social class that was considered fascinating yet deservedly obsolete in the midst of the great depression and countered by great political changes going on in the old countries in 1933, particularly in nearby Germany with a not so aristocratic Australian assuming power.
Fallen aristocrats gather together for a reunion, and the possibility of the arrival of John Barrymore's grand duke has stirred up the rumor mill. His great lover, Diana Wynard, has remained wealthy by marrying prominent psychoanalyst Frank Morgan, and along with her husband attends the reunion where the police are on the watch for Barrymore's arrival. Morgan, closely watching his wife, encourages a reunion with Barrymore, using his psychological mumbo jumbo to manipulate her.
Grand and sophisticated, this is an excellent adaptation of Robert Emmet Sherwood's hit play, not as well known as the other big screen adaptions of a play ("Dinner at Eight", "Cavalcade", popular vehicles for Barrymore and Wynard respectively that year), but definitely should be. A great scene has delusional formerly powerful people and their servants greeting Barrymore (now reduced to working as a cab driver elsewhere) as if he was still in power, including his one time valer Eduardo Cianelli.
A fabulous ensemble directed by Sidney Franklin plays out the comic drama and is highlighted by Una Merkel as an audacious American socialite patient of Morgan's and Henry Travers as his life loving father. Absolutely charming in every way, and slyly mocking the outdated old European social class that was considered fascinating yet deservedly obsolete in the midst of the great depression and countered by great political changes going on in the old countries in 1933, particularly in nearby Germany with a not so aristocratic Australian assuming power.