'Children of Divorce' is about a love quadrangle: childhood friends Kitty (Clara Bow) and Jean (Esther Ralston) on the one side, Vico (Einar Hanson) and Ted (Gary Cooper) on the other. Kitty and Vico love each other, as do Jean and Ted, but what looks straightforward is a receipe for tragedy. This is because Kitty has been taught by her mother that a woman needs to marry wealth - at least when she marries for the first time - and unfortunately Vico is not wealthy. He is the scion of impoverished (that's a relative term) European nobility and expected to do his duty by his family and marry wealth himself. Ted is wealthy and is altogether a bit of a playboy. Tragedy strikes when Jean puts off marrying him until he has got a proper job. Kitty uses the time in order to organise a raucous party, and on the morning after Ted wakes up to discover that, in a drunken stupor, he has married her rather than his true love Jean.
The highlights of the picture are Clara Bow and Gary Cooper. Cooper playes his role evenhandedly. He is remarkable rather because of his later stardom than because his acting here is particularly outstanding. Bow, by contrast, is outstanding. She starts out as a careless flapper and ends as a desparately unhappy woman who sees suicide as her only way out, and every detail and moment of this transition is absolutely convincing. The plot is obviously pretty convoluted and heavy on morals. It does lay it on rather thick, I must say. The viewers are clearly expected to take away the message that divorce was to be avoided at all costs (Kitty's, Jean's and Ted's parents are all divorced, and it is Kitty's divorced mother whose idea of marriage is at the bottom of all the trouble). I am generally no fan of films that try to educate the audience in such a way, but in this case Clara Bow's performance makes up for the deficiencies, at least to a very large extent. All in all, the upsides of 'Children of Divorce' (meaning her and Cooper) outweigh the downsides by quite a bit. In sum: good film.
The highlights of the picture are Clara Bow and Gary Cooper. Cooper playes his role evenhandedly. He is remarkable rather because of his later stardom than because his acting here is particularly outstanding. Bow, by contrast, is outstanding. She starts out as a careless flapper and ends as a desparately unhappy woman who sees suicide as her only way out, and every detail and moment of this transition is absolutely convincing. The plot is obviously pretty convoluted and heavy on morals. It does lay it on rather thick, I must say. The viewers are clearly expected to take away the message that divorce was to be avoided at all costs (Kitty's, Jean's and Ted's parents are all divorced, and it is Kitty's divorced mother whose idea of marriage is at the bottom of all the trouble). I am generally no fan of films that try to educate the audience in such a way, but in this case Clara Bow's performance makes up for the deficiencies, at least to a very large extent. All in all, the upsides of 'Children of Divorce' (meaning her and Cooper) outweigh the downsides by quite a bit. In sum: good film.