Why Change Your Wife?

Review #1697: Why Change Your Wife?

Cast: 

Gloria Swanson (Beth Gordon), Thomas Meighan (Robert Gordon), Bebe Daniels (Sally Clark), Theodore Kosloff (Radinioff), Sylvia Ashton (Aunt Kate), Clarence Geldart (The Doctor), Mayme Kelso (Harriette), Lucien Littlefield (Butler), and Edna Mae Cooper (Maid) Directed by Cecil B. DeMille (#1245 - The Squaw Man (1914) and #1371 - Unconquered)

Review: 

“I love to take some vitally interesting theme and work it out according to life. That is what I am doing with Why Change Your Wife? These themes I am toiling on do a damn lot of good.”

Cecil B. DeMille made seventy feature films over the course of a four decade career, but one would probably be surprised to know that 52 of them were silent films. Sure, the sound features would play a key part in defining him as a crowd-pleasing director with scale and showmanship, but one can't get there without doing a few other kind of films in between for the Massachusetts native. This was the fourth film featuring Swanson directed by DeMille, which started with Don't Change Your Husband (1919) and ended with The Affairs of Anatol (1921). It happens to be part of a string of films that DeMille made involving marriage, although reading a description of the former film (prosaic husband, romantic wife) might make this seem a bit clearer. Of course, this film had a story done by William C. deMille (Cecil's older brother, who unlike his brother did not alter his name) while Sada Cowan and Olga Printzlau wrote the scenario. You may or may not be surprised that this is generally labeled as both a comedy and a drama. Consider the premise: a couple gets tired of each other and divorce each other before eventually falling in love again even with one of them being re-married. Of course, there are a few things that make this a bit interesting, starting with the character played by Swanson, described as someone whose "virtues are her only vices". By the sixth minute, a intertitle is shown that has her character gripe about her husband spending money on wine when one could be thinking about the starving millions in Europe. Her attempts at being a real goody goody extend to music choices, having a dog/not having a dog in the house, clothing, even sleeping next to each other in little separate halved beds. Amusingly, she is inspired to dress better not because of her divorced husband or because of a friend advising her to (we don't see anybody who looks like a friend to either of these folks, so one could just assume these people either don't have friends or they don't get involved in said stuff), but instead because she hears gossipers mocking her looking like her aunt. A myriad of weird events lead to a conclusion that I'm sure you already know, since this actually seems more like a DeMille instructional manual, but I suppose each lead learns a lesson about being a better spouse...well, I guess Swanson learns more than Meighan, but whatever.

So here we are with Swanson, Meighan, and Daniels. Really when you think about it, they seem to have an energy that could be seen as prescient to the screwball comedy that would come across a few years later, or even movies like Mr. & Mrs. Smith (1941, although that divorce movie involved a love triangle with two guys). Swanson gets to play a bit of a double act in terms of balancing "goodliness" with daring charm, which just means that one gets a few chuckles, such as when she is sitting at the pool turning suitors away or when she does the old dangerous substance-in-the-eye wash trick. Meighan pulls enough in the mild bewildered act of dopey straight man to make it work without too many hitches, making sure that one does not grow annoyed at the potential annoyed amusement at someone striking out twice in marriage. This was the third feature role for Daniels, who had moved on from doing short subjects to doing contract work for DeMille. She plays the contrast to Swanson fairly well, peppy in her own way with flaws just as the other two that are interesting when paired with Meighan for (somewhat obvious) moments; each share a scene where one is trying to shave but is foiled by interruptions (because hey, that one bathroom is big enough for the two of us), and it is a bit amusing on the second run). Basically, you get to see how romance can go when piety and superficiality loom over it; either one is a "think of the children!" type or a loose woman...with this film, the latter seems more interesting, but I'm probably more familiar with pious hypocrites than either stereotype here - this is 1920, so consider that along with it.

DeMille made plenty of movies considered to be crowd-pleasers, and this fits that description to a T, although one's mileage may vary depending on how much curiosity they have on the subject of folks learning a lesson about marriage. Honestly, it is the intertitles that might generate more chuckles, if only because of how strange their details get with describing things (one ends with "optically a pippin", really). that either range from being one sentence too long or other various words. I especially admire this one card in minute eight, talking about the "husband's eternal problem" that uses the "-" three times while going on about what he's going to do and the "bad luck of a married man" he has in picking the shop; consider minute 39 with the idea of a mysterious force that gets people together who think of one another that they say "fools call it coincidence"...yeah, I think the writer is messing with the viewer. I especially like the times during the dialogue where certain words are underlined, but the nail on the coffin is near the end when the main two are on a train, where one intertitle talks about if this was fiction, there would be a train wreck or a terrible car accident (!), but in real life ("if it isn't a woman", right), something like a banana peel will change a guy's destiny. Either one is thinking the writers have decided to act out some gripes with themselves or others (some sort of weird therapy or perhaps a predecessor to further personal movies years later), or they are in the mindset of details, details, details (of course, maybe slipping on a banana peel didn't seem quite familiar in 1920). In the end, it is a 90 minute tale that will either entertain your curiosity for what DeMille and company accomplished in its blend of amusement and romance, or one simply will let it pass them by. For me, it is an okay movie, a strangely entertaining movie for some of the right reasons that makes for a very curious affair, one that passes a bit better in the second half while the intertitles manage to befuddle the audience. At any rate, this is in the public domain, so one can see for themselves if they want to encounter this film and its director for a century-old time.

Well, this is technically part of a new project. In coverage of Movie Night from 1921 to 1949, there exists eighteen years in which there are not at least ten reviews for said year (i.e. with this review, 1920 now has ten reviews one can look at). As such, I will commit a small part of my time to picking films from that era to increase the year output over the next few months; for example, 1929 has just five films that were reviewed by me. This "Count to Ten Project" will run as long as I see fit (incidentally, the 1910s will have their own certain project at some point this year).

On the board for the Count to Ten Project:

1921: 5, 1922-23: 8 each, 1924: 9, 1926: 7, 1929: 5

1930: 6, 1931: 9, 1934: 4, 1935: 5, 1936-37: 6, 1938: 5

1940-41: 8 each, 1944: 7, 1948-49: 8 each

Overall, I give it 7 out of 10 stars.