It is a truth universally acknowledged that more people go to the movies to escape their problems than to confront them. This was never more true than in the 1930s when most films sedulously avoided even mentioning the D word, let alone showing people in economic extremis. What audiences got instead, in great profusion, were Andy Hardy, show gals, gangsters and Meeting Cute, to mention just four well trod paths of avoidance.
So, it is always interesting to see a film made during the Depression that focuses on money worries and unemployment. It is especially so when the film is intelligent, realistic (at least until the end) and possessed of good performances by a varied assortment of fine British and American actors, such as this offering from director Clarence Brown. I was particularly struck by the lead performance of Lewis Stone, an early practitioner, along with Spencer Tracy and Irene Dunne, of the always effective Less Is More school of acting. Indeed, Stone's restraint and low key-ness seems to filter down to the rest of the cast. Even veteran scenery chewer Lionel Barrymore gives the furniture a masticatory break, for a change.
Being a Clarence Brown film the pacing is going to be deliberate ( in other words, an hour and twenty minutes feels like two plus) and someone, be it the screenwriters or Brown or all of them, should be shot for that treacly rainbow denouement, but taken all in all this film, set in England (perhaps that enabled a Hollywood studio more easily to make it), will hold your attention. Give it a B.
PS...Of the rest of the cast I was particularly struck with Benita Hume. Sexy and sardonic to Brit perfection. Read where she was married to Ronald Colman and George Sanders. Must check out her other film work.