Riptide is a film that sad to say has not worn well, especially for its stars Norma Shearer, Robert Montgomery, and Herbert Marshall. It's so old-fashioned that I can't see how a remake could ever be possible from the material.
Park Avenue socialite Shearer and titled English earl Marshall meet in costume sharing a limousine ride to a costume party. Both are in insect costumes and they're pretty funny. On an impulse they marry. Would the rest of the film have been as hilarious as the beginning.
After five years of marriage in which Marshall and Shearer now have a daughter, they're getting in a rut, especially for Norma. So much so she's easy prey for the attentions of old friend and Broadway playboy Robert Montgomery. I think you see where this is all going.
Edmond Goulding directed Riptide and two years earlier he had given MGM Grand Hotel which still holds up as a cinema classic. Goulding's next greatest hit was for 20th Century Fox with Nightmare Alley where Tyrone Power shed his matinée idol image. But in writing and directing this film, Goulding came up short of the standard set by those other films.
Riptide was the fifth and final film that Robert Montgomery and Norma Shearer did, the most prominent being Private Lives and The Divorcée. Those hold up better than Riptide.
It's a terribly old-fashioned type of story that creaks along. Would that it was as good as it started out.
Park Avenue socialite Shearer and titled English earl Marshall meet in costume sharing a limousine ride to a costume party. Both are in insect costumes and they're pretty funny. On an impulse they marry. Would the rest of the film have been as hilarious as the beginning.
After five years of marriage in which Marshall and Shearer now have a daughter, they're getting in a rut, especially for Norma. So much so she's easy prey for the attentions of old friend and Broadway playboy Robert Montgomery. I think you see where this is all going.
Edmond Goulding directed Riptide and two years earlier he had given MGM Grand Hotel which still holds up as a cinema classic. Goulding's next greatest hit was for 20th Century Fox with Nightmare Alley where Tyrone Power shed his matinée idol image. But in writing and directing this film, Goulding came up short of the standard set by those other films.
Riptide was the fifth and final film that Robert Montgomery and Norma Shearer did, the most prominent being Private Lives and The Divorcée. Those hold up better than Riptide.
It's a terribly old-fashioned type of story that creaks along. Would that it was as good as it started out.