The final night of Norma Shearer

Today sees the final night of TCM's Star of the Month treatment for Norma Shearer, looking at the movies Shearer made after the death of her husband, MGM producer Irving Thalberg.

The night kicks off at 8:00 PM with Marie Antoinette, a movie that I've briefly mentioned a couple of times. MGM spared no expense in trying to make a movie that would give Shearer a triumphant comback, and that shows. The movie runs over two and a half hours and is filled with all the gloss that MGM was known for back then compared to the other studios. Who ever knew the French Revolution could look that good. I have to admit to not being the biggest fan of the movie, mostly because I find it bloated. It's one of those two and a half hour films that could really use some cutting down to get it under two hours, I think.

That's followed at 10:30 PM by The Women, which is unsurprisingly another movie I don't particularly care for. But then again, as a man I'm clearly not in the target demographic for this movie. There's a reason I've never particularly cared for movies like Random Harvest, either, or laughed at inappropriate times during Dark Victory.

I'm going to have to cop to never having seen Idiot's Delight before. That one comes on at 1:00 AM. Not having seen it, there's obviously not much I can say about it.

The only one of the night's movies I've blogged about before is Escape, at 3:00 AM. It's another movie that's interesting, but does show the MGM gloss on the issues of the day, in this case being that the Nazis were putting dissidents in concentration camps. It's the same issue I have with The Mortal Storm.

Norma Shearer's time as Star of the Month concludes with Her Cardboard Lover at 4:45 AM, and We Were Dancing at 6:30 AM.