verbumctf Review of Our Betters

Our Betters (1933)

'I've learned there's one thing the English can't resist---something for free'

[8/10 · 22 August 2006]

Some will know of this film from a brief excerpt in 'The Celluloid Closet' (dance instructor fop--quite outrageous). See the whole film, and you'll find that excerpt is only one turn of the screw among many made by manipulative Pearl Lady Graystone (Constance Bennett). Lady Graystone is a beautiful American heiress whose fortune bailed out her titled husband so he can continue... but it's less the storyline than the characters that count here. Pearl starts out determined to be a true, loving wife. After discovering that her husband is betraying her, her life morphs into something outwardly scintillating and inwardly 'cheap and vulgar'. Yet she saves, secrectly and in the brink of time, her younger sister from repeating her mistake. The film is based on a 1917 stage hit by W. Somerset Maugham, where the author dissects with an unflinching scalpel the pretensions of 'our betters'. A few scenes get added in the film (opening sequence, presentation at court). There are moments of memorable acting. This is a little gem of its kind, unjustly neglected. And it may cause the viewer to exclaim at the end 'Our betters!--thank God I'm nowhere so bad' and to think 'am I?'