“There isn’t a particle of you that I don’t know…remember…want.”

Before we begin, two important things you need to know about Private Lives, the 1931 film starring Norma Shearer and Robert Montgomery, directed by Sidney Franklin.

1. Norma Shearer is a million suns hot in this. Whether she’s applying lipstick at the mirror in nothing but a slip, mountain climbing in Switzerland or aggressively necking on the piano bench, she’s smoldering. And while I won’t say I wouldn’t have mentioned it otherwise, I mention it here because the movie knows she’s hot, intentionally puts her in hot situations, and being hot is an important part of her character: “The woman’s job is to allure the man.”

The many facets of Norma Shearer’s allure

2. This is not a comedy. Better if you view it as a dark drama about two broken people, once married, now divorced, obsessed with the thrill of their toxic, rollercoaster relationship. Willing to throw away whatever spark of love led them to remarry in the first place. Their new spouses just kindling for the fire. Bow down to a love that consumes all.

The flip side is that yes, this is very much a comedy. The unhinged violence and bickering reaching such a crescendo that it becomes funny. There’s even a scene with Shearer screaming and kicking her feet in the air which predates Carole Lombard’s iconic screwball moment in Twentieth Century.

Shearer in toddler mode, legs kicking. A proto-screwball

It’s one of those rare, stage-adapted early talkies that has come full circle—it feels almost post-modern today. The relationship between Amanda and Elyot is very messy in a way that feels contemporary. The humor is strangely grim, the insults are cutting: “pompous ass,” “evil tempered little vampire,” Montgomery saying he wants to cut off his new wife’s head with a meat axe, numerous references to past domestic abuse, and a male slap to a female face: “Certain women should be struck regularly. Like a gong.”

The prelude to violence. They went there in 1931

When she’s not wrestling and smashing vinyl records over the head of her childish ex-husband (a man who flies into a pouty fit of rage when Amanda doesn’t want to make love after a big meal), Shearer is doing all her acting with that gorgeous face. There’s an early scene where she hears a tune in the air of the veranda, the camera closes in and you see everything from nostalgia to pain to orgiastic delight in the span of ten seconds as she remembers those old, erotic days and nights.

The faces of Shearer as a melody triggers memories

It’s a seriously frank, sex-filled film. When Amanda and Elyot first come to a surprise face-to-face, they both bemoan the fact that their honeymoon “hasn’t started yet.” In other words, their spouses are sexual duds, and it’s implied neither of their new marriages have yet been consummated by the time the two run off together (which I guess sort of lessens the salaciousness of their rebound affair).

They tell themselves they’ve moved on, but they are clearly sexually and emotionally unsatisfied in their new marriages, and still intensely attracted to each other. Amanda’s husband doesn’t even know what a bra is. He averts his eyes when she’s undressed. Elyot’s wife is clingy, begs for three kisses, and has no self-confidence. The tell-tale signs of being bad in bed. 

The cast-off spouses, the sexual duds. Maybe they were made for each other?

You want to root for the runaway lovers—for good sex, for the theory of soulmates—but you also kind of want to see them go down in flames. The final shot of the film is Amanda and Elyot running away again, a look of fear and excitement on their face as the train pulls into the mountain village of Sollochs. That word had previously been their safe word, their signal for a truce. Can they survive without it? The heart is a risky fuel to burn.

“To the devil with love.”