A Bill of Divorcement (1932) - film review

With her husband Hilary committed to an asylum for the insane, Meg Fairfield decides to divorce him so that she can marry another man, Gray Meredith.  But on the day Meg intends to begin her new life with Gray, Hilary manages to escape from the asylum and returns to his home.  He first meets his grown-up daughter, Sydney, who is herself about to get married, to Kit Humphreys.  Sydney’s resemblance to her mother revives in Hilary happy memories of his early married life with Meg and he realises how much his wife still means to him.  As Hilary and Meg confront one another, Sydney realises that she may have inherited her father’s insanity and wonders whether it is right for her to marry...

The only reason for watching this soppy, overrated and hopelessly dated melodrama is to see Katharine Hepburn make her much-vaunted film début (and even that is not as great as some people claim it is).  The second of three screen adaptations of a mediocre play by Clemence Dane, A Bill of Divorcement is painful to watch on account of its excruciating theatricality and dated attitudes towards mental illness.  The film was directed by George Cukor, with very little in the way of flair, and the performances are (almost without exception) of the kind you would expect to see performed by an amateur theatre company in a draughty church hall.    Even the great John Barrymore is not immune to bouts of irksome histrionic excess, although he at least manages to redeem himself in the final, rather poignant scene with Hepburn.   The film’s one saving grace is its brevity.  Another minute of Billie Burke would be enough to drive most spectators to rush out and commit hara-kiri.

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