Heartbreak

I've noticed that I've got a rather higher ratio of more recent movies -- at least if you consider recent as being released after I was born -- on my DVR than older movies. Specifically, I haven't blogged much recently about movies from before 1950. With that in mind, I made a specific point of watching Break of Hearts from Katharine Hepburn's day in Summer Under the Stars to do a post on here.

Hepburn is the female lead, although we don't see her until the second reel or so. The other star is the male lead, orchestra conductor Franz Roberti, played by Charles Boyer. Franz is known to be extremely tough on his musicians, and also for socializing with the sort of high-society woman who atends his concerts. While in New York for a series of concerts, he goes to visit an old friend, Professor Thalma (Jean Hersholt), who teaches music in lives in a rather less glamorous apartment.

Living in the same apartment building is Constance Dane (Katharine Hepburn), who has a love of classical music and has even written a composition for piano that the movie tries to pass off as musical but sounded more contemporary to me. When she stops by to see Thalma, she meets Roberti for the first time.

Constance would love to see one of Roberti's concerts, but when she goes to the box office, she finds that the concerts are all sold out because that's just how popular Roberti is. So she does what any self-respecting lover of classical music would do, which is to sneak in to one of the rehearsals. Roberti is unsurprisingly pissed at first when he discovers Constance in the audience (well, actually, an audience of one). But Constance's explanation is one of those movie tropes that wouldn't work in real life but does in the movies, with Roberti starting a relationship with Constance.

It's a whirlwind romance that leads to the two getting married and going on an extended honeymoon in Europe. They return to New York where Franz will be giving another series of concerts, and the two live happily ever after.

Yeah, right. Constance and a violinist friend, Johnny Lawrence (John Beal) go to have dinner together because Franz is way too busy with rehearsals. Except that he really isn't, as he's seeing another woman, which he was wont to do in his pre-marriage days. Doing it once you've gotten married, however, is much worse, certainly by the standards of 1930s movies.

At this point, the movie really veers into melodrama. Constance obtains a divorce and to support herself, gets a job as an accompanist at one of those Tin Pan Alley publishing companies. Here, she learns that unfortunately she doesn't quite have the talent to be a professional musician. Roberti turns to drink and reaches the point that it's going to derail his conducting career. The only thing that can save him is the love of a good woman like Constance.

It's easy to see from the second half why anybody might have a scathing review of Break of Hearts. Oh my does it become sappy. Boyer and Hepburn both do the best they can with the material they're given, although considering some of the lines Hepburn has, you can be forgiven for thinking the suits at RKO looked at her Oscar-winning performance in Morning Glory and tried to recreate it.

Other people, however, may like this sort of melodrama, in which case they'll probably enjoy Break of Hearts. It's certainly not bad; it just very much fits a certain genre that to me also has the problem of appearing dated. It's definitely not going to be for everybody.