I Loved You Wednesday

Victor Jory is in Paris to study architecture. Elissa Landi is in Paris to study dance. Between classes they study each other in an apartment they share and are very happy. They are about to go to the shore for a couple of weeks, when Jory gets a telegram from his wife, Miriam Jordan. She's at Cherbourg, and since she has the money, he's going to meet her. Miss Landi heads to South America to forget. There she meets Warner Baxter. He's an engineer, finishing up a job, so they happily take a ship to New York, where they part: he to work on the Boulder Dam, she to her triumphs on stage.

Several years later, Baxter and Miss Landi meet again in New York, and are deliriously happy. They're about to go away, when in walks Jory, who thinks he and Miss Landi can take up again where they left off. She is cold. However, when the four principals meet again in a bar, sophistication ensues.

It's directed by Henry King and William Cameron Menzies, and for the first half it's a cinematic delight, in editing and camerawork by Hal Mohr, in a Paris that's half Rene Clair and half Ernst Lubitsch, and a South America out of a zippy Warner Brothers B picture. In the second half, it all turns unlikeable. Baxter, Miss Landi, and Miss Jordan are brittle and snappish. Jory is smarmy. Everyone behaves in a way that makes you think that none of them care how it all turns out; if they don't care, why should you? There are some good lines, full of bitter wit, but it's a severe letdown.

Still, it's a very good first half, and there are glimmers in the second half. It's too bad that it couldn't remain wonderful throughout, but sometimes half a loaf is all you're going to get.