"Noël" happens to be the French word for "Christmas", but it's just a coincidence that I recently got around to watching Private Lives so that I could do a review on it here.
The movie starts out with a wedding, that of Elyot Chase (Robert Montgomery) getting married to Sibyl (Una Merkel). It's a fairly big British wedding. Cut to a second wedding, this one a much more modest affair in France, but betweeen two Britons, Victor Prynne (Reginald Denny) and Amanda (Norma Shearer), as though they're eloping. There's some fairly obvious foreshadowing here that the two couples are going to meet, even if you don't already know the plot.
After the two weddings, we cut to what is probably the French Riviera for the honeymoon. Elyot and Sibyl have booked a nice suite overlooking the Mediterranean, while Victor and Amanda have also booked a nice suite with a Mediterranean view. Again, you can guess that they're going to meet out on the terrace even if you didn't know anything about the plot or what to expect from a Noël Coward movie.
Victor and Elyot could probably get along together, and Sibyl and Amanda could probably also get along together. But there's one minor little problem. OK, it's not so minor. Elyot had previously been married to Amanda, and you can imagine not wanting to meet your ex-spouse on your honeymoon with your new spouse!
There's a bigger problem, however, which is that in some ways, Elyot and Amanda never really fell out of love. Or, they fell out of love but back into love repeatedly, with the divorce coming during one of those times when they were out of love. Now that the two have met each other again after a separation of some time, they realize that the old passion has returned, which really ought to create problems.
Technically, it does, as the two decide to run off with each other to enjoy a ski resort in the Swiss Alps. This time, they say, things are going to be different. Of course, that's not going to happen, and the couple is soon going to realize why they got divorced in the first place, as they start bickering in between bouts of falling back into love. But since they already got divorced once, you have to assume that they're going to reach the breaking point again.
Indeed they do, but this time things get more complicated in that while they're in separate bedrooms of a suite waiting the night out so that can part for good, Victor and Sibyl show up after having searched for the couple for some time. You can only imagine how awkward things are going to be in the morning after everybody wakes up....
I have to admit that I didn't particularly care for Private Lives, but at least I can understand why people who are fans of Noël Coward would enjoy the play in general and this version of it as well. To me, the dialogue came across as Coward thinking he was witter than he actually was, at least when he was writing this play. (Apparently, he originally wrote it for himself to be in the Elyot part, which he did on the stage.) There's a rapid-fire sense to the plot that even Howard Hawks would find impressive, although in my view it doesn't work as well as it does in a Hawks movie like His Girl Friday. I also found the characters irritating, as Elyot and Amanda's bickering quickly grew thin.
But there were also some plot difficulties that I had. I couldn't help but think that the play might be more interesting if Elyot and Amanda didn't run off when they first spotted each other in the adjoining suites, but instead found their old feelings coming back slowly over the course of the play while dealing with their current spouses. And then when Victor and Sibyl show up for the final act, I would have had them see the destruction Elyot and Amanda had wrought upon them and each other, and decided that Elyot and Amanda deserved each other while Victor and Sibyl can live happily ever after together.
Still, a lot of the IMDb reviews really like this movie, so I'm sure a lot of readers will probably enjoy it, too. Watch for yourself; the movie should be available from the Warner Archive although the TCM Shop has an odd tendency to claim some of the Warner Archive standalones are only available on backorder.
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