User Reviews

The risqué theme of an older man being romanced by an under-aged girl never seemed to phase Hollywood. Pairing young starlets with mature leading men was de riguer throughout the history of the studios. Although it did not get around to filming this story until 1943 with the luminous Joan Fonataine in the lead, it did film Edith Wharton's last novel, The Children, as The Marriage Playgound in 1929, which had the identical theme, just a different plot. Here Fredric March was the young man.

In this first screen adaptation of Margaret Kennedy's The Constant Nymph, filmed a year earlier, Ivor Novello seems to be giving March the idea for the character. Here he resembles March greatly during the first part of the film, eschewing his usual romantic leading man image, and getting in some character acting with glasses and pipe as Lewis Dodd, the eccentric young composer.

The first half of the film drags terribly. It goes on far too long at 48 minutes. Mary Clare is amazing as the blowsy Mrs. Sanger. She gives the viewer something to watch. The rest of the plot just lolls limply.

The film doesn't get going until the girls are split up, some to marry, two to go to school. In the second act, where Lewis and Florence are unhappily married and two of the daughters, one of whom is the infatuated Tessa, come to live with them, the drama and interest pick up.

Mabel Poulton is rather uninteresting as Tessa. She doesn't bring the viewer into the story. We don't care for her and her crush, as we do for Fontaine in the remake. Novello does well throughout, although he is not called upon to do much acting after his initial set up of the character with aforementioned traits.

Elsa Lanchester appears briefly as a room-emptying soprano, singing at a home gala. An accidental cork pop hurtles the remaining group into applause, thus ending the performance prematurely. This sort of enlivening bit is needed more of in the tedious plot. One gets bored seeing both Lewis and Tessa dominated by the controlling Florence. Frances Doble only made five films, two of them in 1928 with Novello, the second being The Vortex.

The rapid ending with Lewis finally waking up to Tessa's affection, the running away and all too sudden tragic ending, come rather on top of each other, almost as if the director was running out of film and had to end it quickly to bring it in on time.

It would seem from the images that the film was reconstructed (thought lost until the early 1990) from three different sources.

All in all, what they used to call a "woman's film," a saccharine melodrama about unrequited love, drawn out to the last possible breath. This production could easily have been edited down from 110 minutes to 80 minutes, which might have made the plot more endurable.

I have not seen the early sound version, also British, from 1933. The Hollywood version is equally overblown – it is a one situation plot – but the gloss of the studio polish and Fontaine's deservedly Oscar-nominated performance draw us in and make us care for the character.

This 1928 version is competent, but dull and overlong. Really only for fans of Novello and the novel.