Dated, stagey and suffering from a static camera, this early Philip Barry play still manages to pack a wallop due to Barry's wonderful dialogue and the strengths of the leads, Frederick March and Ann Harding, right at the beginning of their careers, but possessed of a naturalness that carries this movie along. Thanks to the Vitaphone Project for reuniting the rediscovered soundtrack to the moving image.
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boblipton3 February 2003
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,...based on the play by Philip Barry. Jim (Fredric March) and Mary (Ann Harding) get married, although they claim to have a modern, cosmopolitan attitude toward the institution. After several years together, during which they have a son, Jim takes a business trip to Europe where he runs into Noel (Carmelita Geraghty), who used to pine for him. Meanwhile, back in the US, Mary's composer friend Richard (Leslie Parrish), who has been in love with Mary for years, hopes to make things more intimate while Jim is away. Can Jim and Mary's "modern marriage" withstand these extramarital developments?
This marked Ann Harding's big screen debut after years as a stage star. March, too, was making his mark in the new talkies. Having appeared in a handful of silent films in uncredited bit parts. 1929 saw him in seven features, this being the fourth. The Pre-Code elements are self-evident, with the extramarital shenanigans, but this is never racy, really, and maintains an air of sophistication. The leads are both good, but there isn't much depth to the proceedings. Still, it's a classy diversion, although good prints are hard to find. -
roslein-674-87455625 December 2014Slow and stilted, this film is obviously the adaptation of a play--all the action takes place (or could) in one room. The director shows his tin ear (and whatever is the visual equivalent) by starting the movie with Ann Harding and Fredric March going through the wedding service, which goes on and on and on. The two attractive leads, both highly accomplished actors, are the reason for seeing this, as are such distinctly period touches as his saying to her "Take a deep breath" and handing her a cigarette. Ilka Chase also makes two brief, welcome appearances as a fashionable, flippant socialite. But the plot is minuscule and is also well past its use-by date--we're told that a good wife overlooks a husband's affairs if he really loves her and the other women mean nothing to him. And how does she know he feels that way? Because he says so!
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drednm25 December 2010I watched the 1929 Paris Bound, based on a play be Philip Barry and starring Ann Harding in her film debut and Fredric March. They play a loving couple who claim their love will never be tainted by others. March's parents caused a scandal in their set when she divorced him after his affair. They argue at the wedding that the woman was foolish and cost them both their home because of her divorce actions.
With that set up we see March and Harding through their first happy years of marriage. They are devoted but very modern. When business takes March to Paris, he goes alone. They believe a "break" is good for their marriage and she has her work with Richard (Leslie Fenton) on a ballet score. But into this bliss creeps the jealous Noel (Carmelita Geraghty) who has never gotten over losing March to Harding. She sees in the society news that March has gone to Europe alone and she chases after him.
After Harding learns of this, she decides to have an affair with Fenton but March returns home. Will they break up? Will they be able to patch things up? Harding is just wonderful in her first film. She's quite natural and at ease. March is also very good. Together they avoid the stagy acting and over pronunciation that mars other early talkies. Fenton and Geraghty are also good. Ilka Chase takes honors among the supporting cast (also in her film debut). Co-stars include George Irving, Hallam Cooley, Charlotte Walker, Juliette Crosby, and Rose Tapley. -
ilprofessore-12 December 2019This 1929 early sound film based on a lesser Phillip Barry play takes seriously the very people that Cole Porter so devastatingly satirized in his immortal songs. We even have an arty ballet montage staged by Stanislavski's assistant Richard Boleslavski to prove that pretension is not just a recent occurrence. Bad art has been with us always. This is the film debut of the beautiful and lady-like Anne Harding, the perfect upper class American girl that Katherine Hepburn was to play more successfully a few years later in Barry's best play. Fredric March, the best leading man of the day, does a lot of serious kissing here to justify that he really loves his wife and kid despite his weakness of character. What seemed madly sophisticated then in 1929 seems enormously silly now. After watching this, just put on your favorite Cole Porter album. His songs are still with us to remind us that once upon a time anything went.
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WesternOne117 September 2019This is one of those dry soap operas that were offered by small-budget studios (in this case, Pathé) since the 1910s. It's a tepid affair where the characters talk a lot about love and loss of love and running away and leaving their spouses. They have unreal expectations and reactions, ones that only existed on the stage or screen. When Mary Hutton (Ann Harding) starts off her marriage to Jim Hutton (Fredric March) with a declaration that they, as modern, free thinking sophisticates, should allow themselves to see others, right then and there you know this little scheme is guaranteed to backfire, especially when we have seen at the wedding the couple's destined interlopers. That the groom's father has apparently pulled this open marriage stuff on his wife, leaving them unhappy, also is an early tip-off as to the events soon to unravel. Incidently, this film has only about a half minute that has anything to do with Paris. Being produced in 1929, one expects something like a "theme song" that virtually every film had, but although the talented Josiah Zuro was the musical director, it has a spare, uninteresting track. One of the high spots of the film has Mary's paramour (Leslie Fenton) writing a ballet score, and she imagines it performed with a full cast of musicians and dancers, who glide across her room scene in ghostly double and triple exposures. Trouble is, it's lifeless and instantly forgettable. I see this was Ann Harding's film debut as well as cast member Ilka Chase. Well, everybody has to start somewhere.
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planktonrules28 April 2015"Paris Bound" is clearly a Pre-code film with its strange moral sensibilities and it probably will shock most viewers today. However, I also found that the film's message was bizarre and confusing to say the least.
When the film begins, Jim (Frederic March and Mary (Ann Harding in her first film) are getting married. On the day of the wedding, Mary has a strange talk with Jim--almost like she is suggesting an open marriage where each can sleep with whomever they like. Later, it seems more like she really, perhaps, intended to say they both could have their own lives and friends of the opposite sex...which is, practically speaking, an invitation to have an open marriage. Well, Jim is the nice and dutiful husband...for a few years. Unfortunately, Nora is a real 'modern girl' and offers to become his mistress.
In the meantime, you see some weird interludes with Jim's parents. They are divorced and the father blames it all on his wife! He admits to having had affairs but that, to him, seems hardly a reason to end the marriage as these ladies meant nothing to him(??). So, SHE is painted as the unreasonable person. Later, this man advises Mary to take his attitude...and when Mary learns that Jim might have a mistress, she ponders sleeping with her best friend, a man she often hangs out with when Jim is off on business trips.
Does all this sound odd and confusing? Well, wait until you see the ending...and then you'll most likely wonder what the film was all about and what messages it was trying to convey. I know that it's NOT a great film if you want to give newlyweds some healthy marital advice!
So is it any good? Well, I think Harding sometime overacted. March was fine even if his character seemed detestable. Overall, however, the film came off as a bit stagy and unsatisfying. It's also the sort of amoral film that the studios would abandon once the new Production Code was put into effect in mid-1934. -
JohnHowardReid7 October 2016Thanks to the efforts of Gary Lacher who found and repaired a 16mm print, this is no longer a lost film. Alas, it's no lost masterpiece either. In fact, as we might expect from an early talkie, it's all talk, talk, talk and little, little action. But Ann Harding gives a competent performance and the other players, with one exception, are also up to scratch. The exception, oddly enough, is Fredric March, here making his eighth movie appearance, and his third sound film. His is a vital character, but March seems to be playing the role as if he were just discovering movies for the first time in his career. His performance is hesitant, to say the least. Admittedly, director Edward H. Griffith is of no help. He certainly gives Ann Harding the best camera angles, but March doesn't fight back. He seems both intimidated and so overawed that he's content to stay in the shadows, as it were. Just look at the posters reproduced on the Grapevine DVD. At first sight, the cover reproduction of the original 1929 poster does not feature March at all. Ann Harding takes up at least half the poster and her name is right up there in big, big letters. But with the aid of a magnifying glass, you can just make out the name of Fredric March, buried under the leg of some sexy chorus cutie!
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ecaulfield28 June 2009The movie begins with the wedding of Mary (Ann Harding) and Jim (Fredric March). They will be a quite happy couple. Their wedding vows are terribly solemn. It turns out that that dedication won't be the only reason for their bliss.
After the ceremony, the couple's female 'friend,' Noel, is distraught because she will never give up pining for Jim. Jim reluctantly obliges Mary's request that he try to assuage Noel before they alight on their honeymoon. It appears second nature for Mary to consider another woman's feelings at a time when she could be feeling the euphoria of marrying the man she treasures.
The woman Mary sends Jim off to comfort is not a retiring flower. Noel revels in self-pity over her unrequited love, telling Jim, 'I know you kiss me every time you see me what does it matter if you haven't done it as long as you're thinking of it? You can't be indifferent to me so don't try.' Later, Mary tells Noel that she and Jim both love Noel. That is the thing about Mary – she has the right touch. She had the wisdom to send Jim to Noel to try to calm her and the kindness to try to make Noel feel loved.
Mary intends to be wise about her marriage, too. She and Jim are very wrapped up in each other. How desperately they want to be a 'success.' They must mingle with people often so that they won't long for some experience beyond each other:
Mary: I don't like monopolies, at least not for you and me. Jim: Okay, but I'll like you best.
The point is not to let other people become novelties (temptations).
Richard admires Mary from afar. She once spent much time listening to and composing music with him. She tries to make him feel comfortable with her new status, calling herself an old married woman and telling him that she expects that he visit her and work in her new music room.
Mary determines to be self-disciplined each year as publisher Jim goes to Paris to meet authors. She never goes with him. 'What about my child?' is one of her excuses. But she can hardly bear even to see Jim off at the ship so much does his absence hurt her. 'Heavens yes,' she would like to go with him, but 'I have the notion that married people need a holiday from each other.' So as for spending six weeks in Paris with him she says, 'I just never do.'
Mary is filled with exemplary traits: She has the charm of being well-spoken. To 'How's your baby?' she quips, 'Come out tomorrow and I'll hold a one man exhibit.' And no one could be more discreet. When her friend asks her why she didn't come to visit when she was with Jim in Paris the previous year, Mary realizes that she has been mistaken for the 'other woman' Jim was really with, and calmly replies, 'It was the shortest kind of a trip.'
One is left to wonder if the thesis of the film is that infidelity doesn't matter because in truth it doesn't even matter to the person committing it. A wanderer is compelled by physical stirrings beyond his or her control almost as if s/he were an innocent bystander to chemistry.
Two scenes in the film bring this theme to light. Jim's divorced parents have a curious conversation:
Father: You made a failure of your marriage. I may have committed infidelity but you committed divorce. You did me out of my marriage and home. You destroyed a spiritual relationship that belonged only to us. Jim is a lot like me. Mother: Then I pity Mary.
The father repeats this line of reasoning when Mary discovers that Jim may have been unfaithful.
Mary: I don't feel compelled to share him. Father: What has this one misstep got to do with you? I doubt if you've shared anything. Mary: I'm insulted. He couldn't love me and go with her.
Has Mary never had any 'stirrings' for anyone else in all the years she has been married to Jim? Never, she says. He wishes she had so that she would know it's possible.
Richard is writing the music for a ballet. He can't finish it. Mary tells him he'll never finish anything. Richard believes that the unfinished ballet represents Mary's unfulfilled relationship with him. She never finishes anything either, i.e. her self-discipline toward her marriage leads her to repress her feelings.
Is the film trying to say not only that such attractions are inevitable but that acting on them may also be unavoidable at times?
Because, you see, the next thing Mary knows, she has had a minor indiscretion of her own.
Father's point seems to be that chemical attraction is a small thing that one is powerless to control and that when one acts on it, one is not sharing anything that is really of value to one's spouse. Perhaps Mary's experience with Richard teaches her this.
Mary tries to be honest with Jim:
Jim: I'm not certain I want to hear it. I'm certain I don't want to hear it. I don't ever want to hear any bad news.
He suspects Mary wants to tell him of her weak moment with Richard. He knows only that he wants to keep alive the truly affectionate love they have shared. He has no double standard. In rejecting this 'news,' Jim is not only excusing his own actions but excusing Mary's transgressions, if she has made any.
Neither lets pride destroy the unique romantic married relationship they have. Spontaneously, they set off at 2 a.m. to see their little son. Jim loves to see him when he's asleep.
Jim: Have you forgotten anything? Mary: Only my dignity. Jim: That's not anything. -
bkoganbing27 August 2018This dated adaption of one of Philip Barry's lesser known works serves as the film debut of Ann Harding and the fourth film for Fredric March since coming west to Hollywood. Both Harding and March show that they have the right stuff for lengthy film careers.
Paris Bound is a lot less known than The Philadelphia Story, The Animal Kingdom, Holiday, and Without Love mostly because it isn't as good as the others. The film opens with Harding and March exchanging their vows. But they're going to be mature about it. It will be open, but discreet.
Which is all some former lovers, Carmelita Geraghty for him and Leslie Fenton for her is all the encouragement they need.
This film could use a restoration if for no other reason it has two noted Hollywod luminaries and it's by a major American playwright.. The leads perform well, but Paramount hadn't mastered talkie technique.
Even minor Philip Barry should be preserved and enjoyed. -
kekseksa16 October 2016The rediscovered Paris Bound is, as other reviewers have pointed out, something of a disappointment. It might be considered the quintessential talkie in that the characters talk and talk and talk and talk and, frankly, not to much purpose. Philip Barry had a certain reputation as playwright and Paris Bound had a certain success on the stage because it treated a subject that was still regarded as extremely risqué in the US but it is an absolutely dire piece of work. Passages quoted in other reviews give a good idea how "precious" and artificial the dialogue is and comments in other reviews also reveal how ambiguous the treatment is. The fault again lies largely in US society which required such controversial subjects to be couched in fatuous double-talk and to be presented in a totally misleading fashion.
So the controversial nature of the play/film is all a matter of trompe l'oeil. The "liberal" couple are not very liberal at all (even at the outset) but quite extraordinarily uxorious, so that, in a play/film supposedly about adultery, we have in fact an abundance of passionate husband-wife kissing and precious little adultery (talk figures strongly there too) and the conclusion is of course deeply conservative. Adultery, it would seem, is just an illusion; blink twice and it just goes away. The husband's divorced parents (arguably the genuine liberals) are treated rather as aberrant monsters.
Barry shows essentially the same ambiguity in The Philadelphia Story which similarly toys with ideas of divorce and adultery, to end with a predictably conservative conclusion. Divorce, like adultery, is also apparently an illusion. Laugh twice and that goes away too. The Philadelphia Story is also extremely talkative but has the distinct advantage of being funny which Paris Bound is most certainly not.
Virtually the only "American" film-makers who manged to break through this "no sex please, this is the USA" barrier, were Erich von Stroheim and Ernest Lubitsch. Stroheim capitalised on his established wartime reputation as a "German villain" to get away with things(possible because they were heavily marked "villain") which no other director in the US could get away with. Lubitsch, after long years of producing light comedy and musicals to establish a huge if slightly bogus reputation, and by dint of a good deal of skillful mise en scène and a certain low cunning,was able to produce a remarkable film like Design for Living and make light of adultery in A Certain Feeling or To Be or Not To Be. But these remained the exceptions that proved the rule.
The Stroheim logic was peculiar to his own situation and rather ingenious. When a character has been shown, with official approval, raping a nurse and defenestrating a baby in a propaganda film, it is a bit difficult to find grounds on which to then censor the deviant behaviour of a succession of rather similar characters played by the selfsame actor in his fiction films (Blind Husbands or Foolish Wives or Blind Husbands)
But even so Stroheim had to fight hard to maintain his independence and had plenty of problems with censorship, particularly on the part of the snip-happy producers who would eventually succeed in destroying his directing career completely. He was after all at the time only the best director that the US had ever produced (by quite a margin). Who needs such people? Gloria Swanson was probably right in thinking that even Stroheim would not have got away with Queen Kelly as originally filmed - the later scenes, cut from the version eventually shown, are still quite troubling to watch even today. She is wrong in blaming (as she later did) the Hays Code, which did not then exist but, contrary to popular belief, there was plenty of pre-code censorship and the Hays Code merely "codified" rules that very largely already existed.
The difference between "pre-code" and "post-code" is for the most part just wishful thinking. Most censorship, before and afterwards, was in any case, as with Queen Kelly, self-censorship by the producers, constantly terrified of any kind of controversy, which, in those days, still had the power to ruin careers and conceivably even institutions. The Hays Code (in any case their own creation) simply gave producers a convenient alibi. So it is not really the case that the Code prevented directors from doing this, that or the other (particularly the other) but rather that it gave carte blanche to the producers and their henchmen (the so-called "editors", but sometimes more accurately described, even in credits, as "cutters") to chop the films about so as to render them "harmless" in the way they were so fond of doing.
The "Lubitsch touch" was, in the end, a more sustainable method of getting round the rules than "the man you love to hate" method, especially as it was a myth originally created by the production companies themselves. Lubitsch simply broadened the definition.
To return to this film, Fredric March is adequate (the least talkative character, he doesn't really have much to do but kiss) and Ann Harding is, as ever, dazzling, but her two other films made in the year, Her Private Affair - attacked, ironically, by reviewers at that address as being based on a "failed" play - and Condemned are both better films than Paris Bound although this was the film that made Harding a star because of the rather spurious reputation achieved by the play. -
JoeytheBrit5 May 2020Creaky early talkie in which Ann Harding nearly blows her idyllic marriage to Fredric March by jumping to conclusions. Leslie Fenton is the songwriter friend hoping for the chance to comfort her. The characters are one-dimensional, and the acting is terrible and if I was Freddie I'd be more than a little miffed at how quick my wife is to believe the worst...
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nativechick-225468 February 2024Beautiful Ann Harding (Mary Hutton) marries Jim Hutton (Fredric March) . About 20 minutes into the movie, I had to hit pause. I couldn't believe the utterly nonsensical dialogue between Jim Huttons divorced parents. Mrs. Hutton " I Only hope they make a better job, they have love money, dancing, to have the odds on their side, but anyway" Sr. Hutton " I don't think Mary will make the failure of her marriage, you made of yours" Mrs. Hutton " The failure I made? Which of us was in the wrong you or I? Sr. Hutton " You were I may have committed infidelity, but I never committed divorce." Okay, hypocrite blame the woman for your actions. Sickening. Then he goes on to say " you left me because you found out I had gone with another woman. Found it out and wasn't that enough no, because of an affair, which really was a little or no importance to you. You did me out of my marriage, my home you destroyed a spiritual, relationship that belonged only to us. And after all where did it land you? A man wrote that insane dialogue. Sr. Hutton lost his home, wife and spiritual relationship that destroyed both of them. He is NOT taking responsibility for his actions! Sr Hutton " Jim is like me in a great many ways. " Mrs. Hutton "then I'm sorry for her" She grabs her purse gets up and walks away. Utter rubbish, I'm speechless! Jim goes on to have an affair as daddy predicted. Do Jim and Mary divorce?watch and see.
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mmcgee28216 February 2018For years I thought this film existed.There was also earlier information claimed that their was a Technicolor sequence and that was lost.Recently I had discovered that the whole movie was lost all along and that it had no technicolor sequence at all.Not to long ago it was found through16mm safety film,as a part of an early home movie distribution,using a 16mm Vitaphone type projector ,This included the sound disc of the film.The problem is that it was only restored in putting back the sound ,that is about it.It did not include cleaning the print through elimination of the scratches ,the jump cuts and the occasional end of the sentence dialog repeat echos and the surface noise of the sound discs. It would of been as good as the original 35mm print .There was an occasional sound drop ,but that was probably the disc ,but it was not enough to interfere in hearing the dialog.Never the less the story was interesting.Fred and Ann play newlyweds.She wants to make it work.She even discuses about him and her not being a monopoly and that he and she should still be allowed to see other men and women,This pre code movie discuss the pro's and cons of open marriage.It turned out that parent,played by George Irving and Charlotte Walker,of Fred got a divorce when when Charlotte discoverer that Irving had a causal affair with another women and so Charlotte got a divorce.HE jumps on her that she should of excepted him o an open level and continued the marriage.That what he did had nothing to do with them.Well Ann and Fred have to ex girl friends and boy friends,played by Carmelita Geraghty and Leslie Fenton.Carmel loves Fred still and Leslie loves Ann.Ann just wants to be friends with Leslie and will allow him to come visit her and use her piano to create a ballet and just be friends.Well Fred had to go to Paris for publishing business,but he goes their too frequently and she is alon.then she find out from Ilka that he been sing him in Paris with as if she ,Ann was with him.This is when Ann principle of open marriage falls into the garbage.Yes Fred had been having an affair with Carmen.Ann can't take it and now wants a divorce .Her father an law tries to pursuade her not to do an that some time the other half needs someone else too some times.The hays code was enforce back then but not totally,ts subtle ,but your dealing with early swingers. Now Leslie begs her that they have an affair too,she give in,but she hears the door knock in,She has told Leslie to take a walk around the block.While she tell her husband what she is going do.Ask for divorce,but it's her friends.It turns out that she was suppose to organize her wedding anniversary and when is the party going to start tomorrow.but she changes her mind and ilk suggest that she should share her wedding anniversary with friends.Another idea that married couple need to mingle with other too.Frederich show back and no long having an affair with Carmen and just want to be with her only.I don't know if this was in the Philip Barry play or the hays code changed it.In spite of it's lack of Restoration and it's 16mm it's no longer lost and it historically important.I found out about this film at one of the vitaphone newsletter.I forgot how many year ago this news letter was.That when was able to order it from grape vine video.It's worth while. 02/15/18.