Burdened with a less than exciting script, Janet Gaynor and Charles Farrell ended their twelve film partnership with the undistinguished CHANGE OF HEART. Four recent college graduates (Gaynor, Farrell, Ginger Rogers and James Dunn) travel together to New York to make their fortunes. You would think that the travails of young friends trying to make their ways in the big city would make for compelling drama, but it rarely does.
Gaynor plays a saintly soul with the patience of Job, and it's a testament to her skill as an actress that she makes so treacly a role thoroughly likable. Poor Farrell acts well enough but, as became customary for him in these talkie pairings with Gaynor, is stuck playing a dumbbell who actually falls sick unto death simply because Rogers has married somebody else! Gaynor finally wins her true love by nursing him back to health. This happens in a long, long scene during which she shaves him! I don't want to blame filmmakers for taking chances, but this was one chance that didn't pay off.
Ginger Rogers was in the interregnum between FLYING DOWN TO RIO and THE GAY Divorcée, meaning that she was a rather hot property but not yet a true star. This role, commonplace in thirties' cinema (heck, Claire Dodd made a career playing it), is unique in her own career and one of the few unsympathetic characters that she ever played. She probably performed it better than the film deserved, something you could say for its entire excellent cast.
Gaynor plays a saintly soul with the patience of Job, and it's a testament to her skill as an actress that she makes so treacly a role thoroughly likable. Poor Farrell acts well enough but, as became customary for him in these talkie pairings with Gaynor, is stuck playing a dumbbell who actually falls sick unto death simply because Rogers has married somebody else! Gaynor finally wins her true love by nursing him back to health. This happens in a long, long scene during which she shaves him! I don't want to blame filmmakers for taking chances, but this was one chance that didn't pay off.
Ginger Rogers was in the interregnum between FLYING DOWN TO RIO and THE GAY Divorcée, meaning that she was a rather hot property but not yet a true star. This role, commonplace in thirties' cinema (heck, Claire Dodd made a career playing it), is unique in her own career and one of the few unsympathetic characters that she ever played. She probably performed it better than the film deserved, something you could say for its entire excellent cast.