Die mise en scène ist noch dem Stummfilm verhaftet: Eine Einleitung nur über Zeitungsausschnitte und stehende Bilder, in denen angekündigt wird, dass die Ex-Frau des Upper-Class-Rechtsanwalts Neil Dunlap (Clive Brook) neu geheiratet hat. Dunlap sieht auf einem Zeitungsfoto reichlich bedröppelt aus, und die Positionierung am Rande und unter der neuvermählten Ex zeigt (wie auch in anderen Filmen von Dorothy Arzner), wer hier das schwache Geschlecht ist.
Ruth Chatterton might seem right at home in brittle society roles or even as career women but she also had another persona early in her career - the floozie and she played it hard!! In "Paramount on Parade" when most of the studio's stars did turns she played it straight as a French tart who sings "My Marine" to Frederic March.
"Anybody's Woman" is the sort of woman that should have been better. It took an interesting idea and didn't do enough with it.
There are two key scenes in this truly riveting pre-code drama that stand out as classics in my mind. First, a scene where Ruth Chatterton, playing a party girl who has married drunken wealthy attorney Clive Brook, orders him to sober up to deal with an important client, and next a scene where Chatterton, feeling out of place at a dinner party she is hosting, gets drunk herself then accuses one of the guests of feeling her up under the table.
I recently denigrated Ruth Chatterton's performance in another film and became beset with the malaise that attends the negative mindset. Asked myself, "how could I be so hardened?
Neil Dunlap (Clive Brook) marries burlesque performer Pansy (Ruth Chatterton) after a drunken night which he does not recall. His sister tries to convince him to dissolve the marriage as Pansy is not in the same social class as her lawyer brother.
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