My title refers to the bad behavior of artist Larry Maynard (Neil Hamilton), an American heir of great wealth who decides to assuage his boredom and be a starving artist in France for awhile at the beginning of the 20th century. What immerses one more in the experience than pitching woo to one of the local French farm girls (Helen Hayes as Madelon Claudet), luring her away from her family and farm with promises of matrimony and excitement, and then living with that girl in Paris while the art critics tell you what you don't want to hear - that you have no talent.
Alan gets a cable from home - his dad has had a stroke. He promises to return shortly - maybe he even believes that promise. But once back in America Alan's spine of Jello wins out and he marries the girl his wealthy family wants him to marry. You only see one scene at his bachelor party with him discussing with a groomsman that his romance with Madelon was "real". Yeah buddy - real pleasant and real over - for him. Meanwhile Madelon has discovered she is pregnant and waits for an Alan that never returns and probably never even writes- he is that big of a coward. He probably just figures his silence is deafening. So there she is pregnant, abandoned, and shunned by her family back in Normandy.
Now the actual film runs through this quite quickly. In fact, the film is very quickly paced and if you don't pay attention you'll get lost. A very genuine precode moment in a film that insinuates a lot but really shows nothing - Madelon has just given birth. Knowing she is an abandoned single mother she wishes aloud that she would die and that the baby would die. But when she has the baby placed next to her that scorn turns to love. He is no longer an extension of Alan, but her child. Helen Hayes makes this transformation with just facial expressions - no dialogue.
The actual story that follows is everything that Madelon does and suffers for the sake of her son, plus a few injustices thrown in for good measure that have her being a victim of circumstance that serve to separate her from her son for years. But she does what she has to do to get the boy a first rate education, and for a woman like Madelon that means turning to the world's oldest profession and I don't mean farming.
The end of her story has her used up and old before her years - probably being in her mid 40's but looking 20 years older - so desperate she is turning herself in to be a ward of the state so that she can at least get medical care and food. Meanwhile her son (Robert Young as Dr. Lawrence Claudet) has become a great young physician of Paris whose star is rising. He believes his mother is long dead and that his education and living expenses while a student were courtesy of her estate.
Now this story is being told in flashback by an old friend of Madelon's, Dr. Dulac. He has been a substitute dad to Lawrence all of these years, and knows what Madelon has been doing to care for the boy. The point of the story was to convince Lawrence's wife, who was getting ready to leave him in the middle of the night, that her sacrifices as a physician's wife were nothing compared to what others (Madelon) had suffered. How will all of this work out? Watch and find out.
The story is nothing that would win an award for best screenplay. Movies about suffering sacrificing moms are as old as filmmaking itself. The payoff is in how Helen Hayes convincingly portrays her character without the help of very good dialogue and with a film that moves quite quickly through everything. Helen Hayes' filmography is not very lengthy, mainly because her forte was the stage. This makes her good performances as a film star even more impressive.
My one problem with the entire film - the premise of the opening. As the film opens, it is the middle of the night and Alice Claudet is creeping into her husband's study to leave him a letter saying she is leaving plus she leaves the key to the house next to the letter. Dr. Dulac, sleeping in a chair in the study, is awakened by her movement and thus starts the conversation between them and the story of Madelon. Why did Alice feel it necessary to leave behind the key to her own house? This is not the Holiday Inn, it's her home too! And why is she OK with somebody unrelated to her and her husband sleeping in a chair in their house? Weird stuff from MGM, but worth it for Helen Hayes alone.
Alan gets a cable from home - his dad has had a stroke. He promises to return shortly - maybe he even believes that promise. But once back in America Alan's spine of Jello wins out and he marries the girl his wealthy family wants him to marry. You only see one scene at his bachelor party with him discussing with a groomsman that his romance with Madelon was "real". Yeah buddy - real pleasant and real over - for him. Meanwhile Madelon has discovered she is pregnant and waits for an Alan that never returns and probably never even writes- he is that big of a coward. He probably just figures his silence is deafening. So there she is pregnant, abandoned, and shunned by her family back in Normandy.
Now the actual film runs through this quite quickly. In fact, the film is very quickly paced and if you don't pay attention you'll get lost. A very genuine precode moment in a film that insinuates a lot but really shows nothing - Madelon has just given birth. Knowing she is an abandoned single mother she wishes aloud that she would die and that the baby would die. But when she has the baby placed next to her that scorn turns to love. He is no longer an extension of Alan, but her child. Helen Hayes makes this transformation with just facial expressions - no dialogue.
The actual story that follows is everything that Madelon does and suffers for the sake of her son, plus a few injustices thrown in for good measure that have her being a victim of circumstance that serve to separate her from her son for years. But she does what she has to do to get the boy a first rate education, and for a woman like Madelon that means turning to the world's oldest profession and I don't mean farming.
The end of her story has her used up and old before her years - probably being in her mid 40's but looking 20 years older - so desperate she is turning herself in to be a ward of the state so that she can at least get medical care and food. Meanwhile her son (Robert Young as Dr. Lawrence Claudet) has become a great young physician of Paris whose star is rising. He believes his mother is long dead and that his education and living expenses while a student were courtesy of her estate.
Now this story is being told in flashback by an old friend of Madelon's, Dr. Dulac. He has been a substitute dad to Lawrence all of these years, and knows what Madelon has been doing to care for the boy. The point of the story was to convince Lawrence's wife, who was getting ready to leave him in the middle of the night, that her sacrifices as a physician's wife were nothing compared to what others (Madelon) had suffered. How will all of this work out? Watch and find out.
The story is nothing that would win an award for best screenplay. Movies about suffering sacrificing moms are as old as filmmaking itself. The payoff is in how Helen Hayes convincingly portrays her character without the help of very good dialogue and with a film that moves quite quickly through everything. Helen Hayes' filmography is not very lengthy, mainly because her forte was the stage. This makes her good performances as a film star even more impressive.
My one problem with the entire film - the premise of the opening. As the film opens, it is the middle of the night and Alice Claudet is creeping into her husband's study to leave him a letter saying she is leaving plus she leaves the key to the house next to the letter. Dr. Dulac, sleeping in a chair in the study, is awakened by her movement and thus starts the conversation between them and the story of Madelon. Why did Alice feel it necessary to leave behind the key to her own house? This is not the Holiday Inn, it's her home too! And why is she OK with somebody unrelated to her and her husband sleeping in a chair in their house? Weird stuff from MGM, but worth it for Helen Hayes alone.