The Divorcee is an intriguing Pre-Code examination of double standards. A married couple break up not because the husband cheats on his wife, which he does first, but because she later cheats on him and he cannot accept her infidelity. The script makes a rather impassioned plea for fairness in the ways that the different genders are treated when it comes to these kinds of behaviors, but the story fails women, in particular, with its rather retrograde ending.
We first meet Jerry (Norma Shearer) and Ted (Chester Morris) with their group of wealthy friends at some sort of cabin retreat. They get engaged during this trip, but their friend Paul (Conrad Nagel) gets jealous because he’s in love with Jerry himself. He gets drunk and then has a horrible car accident that leaves another one of their friends, Dorothy (Helen Johnson), disfigured. Out of guilt, Paul marries Dorothy in her hospital room while intercutting scenes show us Jerry and Ted’s wedding. You might think that Jerry and Paul will later have an affair, but you’re already off base. That would be too simple.
On the day of their third anniversary, Jerry and Ted seem very happy together, but when their friends show up with a woman named Janice (Mary Doran), Ted gets very uncomfortable. He’s leaving for Chicago the same day for business, but Jerry quickly realizes that he’s upset because he was unfaithful with Janice. He tells Jerry all the usual lies: he was drunk, it wasn’t planned, it doesn’t mean anything, blah blah blah. She’s angry and disappointed with him, and he leaves for a week.
Ted does try to get in touch with her to apologize, but she manages to avoid or ignore his attempts. Their friend Don (Robert Montgomery) takes her home, and he’s a little bit drunk like Ted was with Janice. Don takes her to a club where she’s clearly thinking about what she’s going to do with Don later on. There’s a very determined look on her face. Initially, she’s tearful over her own fidelity, but she gets angry quickly when Don asks her not to tell Ted. How does she tell her husband? “I’ve balanced our accounts. That’s all.” That certainly seems like one of the coldest announcements possible, and he winds up angrier over her infidelity than she did over his own infidelity. It’s quite a double standard, and she points it out to him directly.
One of the wildest scenes follows. Ted shows up drunk at a friend’s wedding, demolishes the cake, and punches a man that he thinks might have been the one she slept with (he’s wrong, of course). He then goes home to pack so that he can leave her. Morris is particularly good in this sequence, and he’s especially strong when Jerry is pleading for forgiveness out of a sense of fairness. He cannot see that what she did is no worse (or better) than what he did, and she witheringly condemns his male pride.
After they divorce, Jerry dates a series of men in a brilliantly edited sequence that only shows pairs of hands (one male, one female) in the shots. The dialog establishes that she’s seeing men from a wide range of nationalities based upon the accents. She’s also acquiring quite a bit of jewelry, it appears. Her hair has gotten looser, curlier than before, suggesting the freedom that she now feels, and she claims to be having a good time even if she admits that none of these relationships are serious.
You remember the unfortunate Paul from earlier, yes? Well, Jerry and Paul meet on a train, and he tells her that he still loves her. She breaks down at his admission and admits that she’s very tired of all these so-called good times. His marriage to Dorothy has been an unhappy one for them both, and he wants to divorce his wife and marry Jerry. He’s got a new job in Japan, so it could be a fresh beginning for them both. She accepts his proposal only to be confronted by Dorothy, who comes to see Jerry and finds Paul there. She tells Paul that she wants to stay married because he’s all she has at this point. This scene is a bit tough to watch because the actress playing Dorothy is wearing a very dark veil to cover her disfigured face. How could she even tell who she’s talking to? Can she see through all that black fabric?
Jerry decides that she wants to reunite with Ted. Remember what I said about the movie’s ending unraveling its premise that women might have as much right to have an affair as men do? Of course, everyone who does so must still be punished, and this was before the Production Code went into effect. She moves to London for a new job and keeps going out in Paris with the hopes of finding Ted. They do meet again, and the film provides its happy Hollywood ending for two people who have, I suppose, both realized that they’ve each done the other wrong. It still seems rather unrealistic given all that’s happened.
Shearer was chosen as the Best Actress for her performance, it’s quite easy to see why. She does get to show a wide range of emotional responses, and her face is very expressive about what’s happening to her. She doesn’t need dialog all the time; she can convey emotions very directly. I know that the Academy had not yet started awarding Best Supporting Actress yet, but if they had, I’d fully expect that Zelda Sears as Hannah, the maid who remains loyal to Jerry through the film, would have been nominated. She’s great comic relief and knows how to deliver her lines with a lot of zing. When she tells Jerry at one point that she has a date with the butcher, Jerry asks if he has “honorable intentions.” Hannah’s reply: “I’m afraid they are. He just wants to keep a good customer.” It’s nice to have these moments of fun.
Oscar Win: Best Actress (Norma Shearer)
Other Oscar Nominations: Best Picture, Best Director
(Robert Z. Leonard), and Best Writing
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