Another one of those movies that shows up on TCM from time to time where I recognized the title, but never watched it, is Cynara. With that in mind, the last time it showed up on TCM I made the point of recording it so that I could watch it and do a post on it here. Eventually, I got around to watching it, writing this post, and scheduling it in the queue of movies to blog about.
The movie opens in Naples, Italy. Jim Warlock (Ronald Colman) is talking to his wife Clemency (Kay Francis), about his desire to get on a boat to South Africa (at the time still part of the British Empire, with the apartheid system still a good 15 years away) since he's badly screwed up his life and relationship with Clemency and needs to leave his native England to put his life back together. But what did he do that's so bad, and why is Clemency seemingly OK with his desire to go to South Africa? As you might guess, we're about to get yet another flashback, as though that's never ever been done in the movies before....
In his native Britain, Jim is a barrister working with his freind John Tring (Henry Stephenson) and married to Clemency coming up on seven years. Theirs is an impossibly happy marriage, and Jim is planning to celebrate their seventh anniversary by buying his wife the sort of jewelry that you only see in the movies that nobody in real life could possibly afford. But when he gets home to give his wife the gift, he finds that things aren't going so well, albeit not through any fault of his or Clemency's. Instead, she's got an idiot sister who chases after men, this time the sort of parachute jumper who might have been a character in the Bette Davis movie Parachute Jumper. Clemency needs to abscond with her sister to get said sister away from this man, and is planning to do so by taking the sister to Venice.
Jim and John are both baching it, so one night they go out to dinner at the sort of restaurant people went to in 1930s movies when they wanted to go slumming, if they were in the class of people who could afford to go slumming. Of course, other patrons are not slumming, like the pair of girlfriends in the next booth, Doris (Phyllis Barry) and Milly (Viva Tattersall). They're sitting in booth next to the one in which Jim and John are sitting, and Doris decides to take Jim's hat on a lark and try it on. So the two pairs are introduced to each other.
Now, as you might guess considering where the movie started, there's going to be a sort of illicit love affair during the time while Clemency is still away in Venice. Jim takes Doris and Milly back to their apartment, where Doris gives Jim their address as well as where they work. Now, Jim should probably have told Doris here that he's already married and that his wife is away for reasons, but he can't be bothered to do that, instead ripping up Doris' address in the taxi. John, for his part, decides to have Jim be the judge in a swimsuit contest where Doris is one of the contestants.
Finally, Jim tells Doris about his wife, but while she claims she can handle it and knows she can never really have Jim, she eventually reacts very badly when Clemency returns from Italy -- by committing suicide. Because of this death under adverse circumstances, there's going to be a coroner's inquest, and the relationship between Doris and Jim is going to come to light. And while it could theoretically be seen as innocent, Jim is a barrister and there is the whole matter of legal ethics....
Cynara is a well-enough made movie, but it's one of those early 1930s movies that, looking back on it 90-plus years on, is badly dated because of how much morals have changed in the intervening 90 years. Colman does a fine job with his role, but for the audiences of 2025, it's a role that we're probably going to find difficult to identify with. Still, for anybody who's a fan of old movies, if Cynara is one you haven't seen before, it's definitely one that's worth watching.
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