Easy Virtue

I watched the Alfred Hitchcock movie, "Easy Virtue."

It is a silent one, with the DVD I have having a nice music soundtrack to keep it from being completely silent.

I believe the date was 1926 for this film.

In the film, the main character, Larita, was accused of cheating on her husband and found guilty. It didn't appear to me that she actually was guilty, but maybe there was a little dalliance there somewhere. I frankly missed whatever it was she was supposed to have done wrong, even though I was watching closely.

Anyway, found guilty, the old coot who was her husband, divorced her. So she's off to lose herself at the Mediterranean somewhere. While there she meets a guy named John Whittaker, a young man who falls in love with her. They have a grand old time and eventually get married.

Then for some reason, which I couldn't figure out either, they go to live with his parents and the various other folks of the household. The mother is a terror to Larita, and she scared me too, looking very imposing and mean. The father is a nice guy, and most of the rest of the family is fairly decent, including John's ex-girlfriend, who's a real champ. The mother and one daughter seem to be the worst, especially the mom.

Eventually the mother turns John against Larita. He admits as much outside and Larita, behind a bush, overhears him.

About now the family learns Larita's terrible secret, that she was involved in this scandalous divorce. Mother confronts her, and it's a mess. Especially since they've already invited everyone in for a big party in honor of John and Larita. Things are fairly uneventful at the party ... and it drifts off from there ... with the ending being that the happy couple get divorced.

I was amazed at how much smoking Larita did in the film (I can't remember the actress' name.) That might've seemed scandalous too but no one mentioned it. Even though I don't recall other women smoking.

I was looking at a book on Hitchcock's films, "Hitchcock's Films Revisited," by Robin Wood, who says in a footnote (p. 242), "The figure of the guilty woman occurs already -- if not very interestingly -- in Easy Virtue..." That's right about the "not very interestingly." It seems like for being so scandalous, Larita kept it all very sedate and under control. I was expecting her to go mad at the party and to shame John's family beyond reason. But it didn't happen.

It's interesting to a point ... I watched in an interested way. But mostly because I kept expecting something big to happen, and it didn't. The menacing mother was a real joy to watch, very yucky. And I sort of liked Larita, although she wasn't all that interesting. I liked Sarah, the ex-girlfriend, who told John he needed to stand by Larita (great advice and very gracious.) But I hated John for giving in to his mother and turning on Larita. He should've taken Sarah's advice, and stood by Larita in true love.

It might not have been a great ending for Hitchcock to do it that way, of course, but I like to see love prevail!