After Tonight (1933)

"After Tonight" is a rather heavy-handed and sappy love story--the type that, thankfully, died off a long time ago. Constance Bennett plays a Mata Hari-type woman. She's spying for the Russians during WWI and is posing as an Austrian nurse. Gilbert Roland plays an Austrian spy smasher--a guy whose job is to locate and liquidate spies like her. However, two VERY mismatched pair ends up falling in love. Now this is all a bit hard to believe and melodramatic, but it COULD have worked. However, at the end, when she is discovered, the film degenerates into a juvenile mess--where a silly tacked on happy ending occurs even though it defies logic and ruins the film with sickening sentimentality. Even if Bennett and Roland gave it their best, this poorly written film was destined to be a silly mess...which it is. If it sounds like I really, really hated the film, you are right--mostly because the ending left me feeling like I'd wasted my time.

Incidentally, about a decade after this film, Bennett and Roland married. They didn't stay married, but they married.