Well, there is a divide

One of the movies that I recorded off of TCM recently because the synopsis sounded interesting, and because I'm always up for an early talkie, was The Great Divide.

There's an opening title card informing us that the movie is set about where the "Great Divide", by which I'm assuming the continental divide that divides waters flowing to the Pacific and those flowing to the Gulf of Mexico, meets the US/Mexican border, which would put it in southwestern New Mexico. Steven Ghent (Ian Keith) owns a mine there, but has just decided to sell it. To celebrate, he goes into town.

At the same time, a bunch of rich folk from back east show up, including Ruth Jordan (Dorothy Mackaill) and her fiancé Edgar (Creighton Hale). They're part of a fast set that a man of hard physical work like Steven doesn't really care for. But things are about to get a lot more complicated. As part of the celebration, Steven dresses up as a Mexican bandit and does a musical number in costume. Ruth sees this, and immediately falls for the exotic-to-her man, even though she's supposed to get married to another man. And Steven of course, has that antipathy for Ruth and her friends at first.

And then there's Manuella (Myrna Loy), who has always had the hots for Steven even though the feeling isn't mutual and he only considers her a friend at best. But she tries to get Ruth to think that Steven is engaged to her, to no avail.

And if you think all that is complicated, there's more. Steven learns that Ruth is the daughter of a man who used to be the co-owner of the mine along with Steven! So Steven decides he's going to give Ruth a quick education in the West, which he does... by kidnapping Ruth and taking here through the mountains of the Old West and eventually back to his cabin up in the mountains. Everybody else has no clue of what's really happened, and thinks that somebody sinister has kidnapped Ruth, so a posse is set up to look for the guilty man, which could put Steven in a whole lot of difficulty.

The Great Divide is really a bit of a mess that doesn't quite work, largely because of the bizarre plot, which I can't imagine not being bizarre even for 1929 when it was released. On the bright side is the presence of Myrna Loy. At this stage of her career she hadn't worked with William Powell, and certainy hadn't become Nora Charles. Instead, she was still typecast as the exotic vamp. She'd still be doing it for a couple more years, but I can't help but wonder whether she already found annoying at this point, because Loy plays Manuella in the most shamelessly overacting style you can imagine. It's hilariously if unintentionally funny, and Loy steals the show every time she's on screen.