February 28: Children of Divorce (1928 – Frank Lloyd)

★★★★

Melodrama is the language of popular silent film, and Children of Divorce speaks it fluently.  The story moves from one melodramatic scene to the next, starting in the opening when Kitty as a child is dropped off a convent while her newly-divorced mother goes merrily out into the world.  Kitty is rejected by the other girls there until another child of divorce, Jean, befriends her.  Jean then takes care of new girl, even comforting her in a very expressionist dorm scene.  The melodrama continues at this same clip throughout, making Children of Divorce a moving film experience.

But as touching as the film is, Frank Lloyd doesn’t connect us with the film as strongly as he might because he doesn’t exploit the drama that good characterization can build.  Jean, for example, is largely a self-sacrificing paragon of virtue who worries about Kitty, her daughter, and everyone else.  She’s not a character with conflicts or with much background.  Meanwhile, Vico has no character development at all and seems more a plot device than anything else, while Ted is little more than the handsome pawn of the two women, doing whatever either one of them wants.  Clara Bow’s Kitty is the most complex character, repeatedly torn between her love for Vico or for Jean but at the same time following her mother’s teachings that she needs to secure an income through marriage.  Bow's acting delivers this moral conflict especially well.  In an early scene with Einar Hanson's Vico, Lloyd leaves the camera on Bow's face, and we watch her go from resisting Vico's profession of love to joyfully accepting it and then to setting her determination to marry Ted for his money.  And all this  only by changes in her facial expression.  But even with such masterful acting and a character of some complexity, Kitty remains difficult to sympathize with because her script treatment is so thin.  It's hard to sympathize with her internal conflict because the film doesn’t build the importance of wealth to her.

But while Children of Divorce isn’t as strong as it could be, it still packs a melodramatic punch at its end.  We know that Kitty should end up with Vico and Jean with Ted, so we expect to see how the couples overcome the blocks to these relationships.  Kitty and Vico need to resolve the problems the Catholic church would pose if Kitty were to divorce, and Jean and Ted would need to solve the problem posed by Ted’s daughter with Kitty so the girl doesn’t become another child of divorce.  At the end of the film, Frank Lloyd gives us an unexpected resolution to this tension, and it’s not a resolution that a viewer would expect or, for that matter, want.  The film goes dramatic through its final moments.

An irony of Children of Divorce is that although it wants to condemn divorce, money is the real force that drives the melodrama to the tragic ending.  Torn between love and money, Kitty choses money to the detriment of everyone involved.  While high divorce rates and an irresponsible approach to marriage is indeed an issue, it’s not the center of the film.  Children of Divorce ultimately condemns allowing money to rule the heart.