In an Oscar Wilde play, cynicism is a pose that allows characters to utter amusing epigrams and paradoxes. In Our Betters, the characters are themselves cynical, and their remarks are therefore depressing and ugly. There's much about how society will put up for any kind of bad behaviour provided the culprit has bags of money, how marriage and "love" are based on the search for money and rank, and especially a great deal on extra-marital affairs as normal and accepted, even expected, provided society can pretend they don't know about them. Everyone seems to be manipulating everyone else. Pretty awful stuff.
There's a good deal of people striding about and striking poses with long cigarette holders in the way the magazines of the day portrayed them.
A long scene of women walking into a room and curtsying before the King and Queen seemed pointless and unnecessarily drawn-out
Gilbert Roland as a petulant, kept man (in his pre-moustache days) does an awful, a truly painful bit of amateur acting.
I didn't understand the relationship between Pearl and the older gentleman. He was giving her money on a regular basis, declared his love for her repeatedly, and when he found out she'd had an affair, he said he felt betrayed. Are we to understand that she was sleeping with him? Yuk. Was she that mercenary?
It's worth watching as a period piece and out of curiosity for its being by Somerset Maugham, but other than that I didn't find any pleasure in it.
There's a good deal of people striding about and striking poses with long cigarette holders in the way the magazines of the day portrayed them.
A long scene of women walking into a room and curtsying before the King and Queen seemed pointless and unnecessarily drawn-out
Gilbert Roland as a petulant, kept man (in his pre-moustache days) does an awful, a truly painful bit of amateur acting.
I didn't understand the relationship between Pearl and the older gentleman. He was giving her money on a regular basis, declared his love for her repeatedly, and when he found out she'd had an affair, he said he felt betrayed. Are we to understand that she was sleeping with him? Yuk. Was she that mercenary?
It's worth watching as a period piece and out of curiosity for its being by Somerset Maugham, but other than that I didn't find any pleasure in it.