I saw the 1941 Vivien Leigh vehicle "That Hamilton Woman" a while ago, and while I knew it was about the same subject matter as "The Divine Lady," I did not realize that it was a doggedly faithful remake of the earlier film.
It's hard to review movies from 1929, that dreadful year for film that saw many people in the industry trying and failing miserably to figure out what to do with the new technology known as sound. "The Divine Lady" avoids that problem mostly, since, aside from some music tracks and sound effects, this is a silent film. But it feels like a silent film saddled with the clunky technology that was required for sound, and from today's perspective it has more in common with the static early sounds films than it does the artful and ambitious late silents.
Frank Lloyd won the Oscar for Best Director in this, the second year of the Academy Award's existence. His nomination actually cited two other films, neither of which I've seen: "Drag" and "Weary River." But though rules in the second year allowed artists to be nominated for multiple pictures in the same category, records seem to indicate that they only won for one of them. This is also the second and last year to date that the award for Best Director went to a film not nominated for Best Picture (the other being Lewis Milestone the year before for "Two Arabian Knights," but since the Academy gave two directing awards that year, one for drama and one for comedy, it's not an apples to apples comparison). "The Divine Lady" also brought Corinne Griffiths a nomination for Best Actress (as far as I know, Griffiths did not make the transition to sound, or at least did not last long if she did) and John Seitz a nomination for Best Cinematography. Seitz would go on to become a frequent collaborator on Billy Wilder's films.
Grade: B-
