Diana Churchill (Angela Shale), Phillips Holmes (Nick Shale), Romney Brent (Joe Clayton), Carol Goodner (Gwen Clayton), Charles Paton (Webster), Olga Edwardes (Lucy Webster), Alec Winstone (Billy Milton), Hugh Miller (Philip Carson), Kathleen Kelly (Mary), Dora Gregory (Mrs Webster).
Director: HERBERT BRENON. Screenplay: Michael Egan. Adaptation: Vina de Vesci, John Fernald. Based on the stage play by Michael Egan. Photography: Walter Harvey. Producer: Walter C. Mycroft. A British International Picture.
Not copyrighted or theatrically released in the U.S.A. but available for non-theatrical use under the title, "Family Affair". U.K. release through Associated British Picture Corporation: January 1937. Australian release through British Empire Films. 74 minutes.
SYNOPSIS: Wife forces inventor to sell out to a big corporation rather than take on the corporation by marketing his invention himself.
Brenon does his best with this, trying to give it a bit of pace, but is ultimately defeated by the fact that it's simply a photographed stage play with a great deal of the action confined to a single set. There's little you can do with two players in one set for forty minutes beyond intercutting close-ups with two-shots.
Thanks to its feminist theme, the film rode to success on the coat- tails of the play (which ran for two years in London's West End). It was made on the cheap too, with very little action outside the play's original small sitting-room set, aside from a short (but cramped) night-club sequence about 45 minutes in.
Most of the players do handle their lines with a fairish finesse. Phillips Holmes, as usual, is the chief drawback. He has the key role, but singularly lacks charm and charisma. Miss Churchill is not the most appealing of players either, but at least she has the right defiant spirit. Romney Brent in the smallish role of a henpecked husband in love with a florist (Kathleen Kelly) is the most ingratiating of a somewhat second-string, if eager cast.
I've remarked before that nothing dates so badly as sex comedies. True, they can still be amusing provided their dated philosophy and now outrageously stale situations are leavened with wit or even slapstick. And the smarter the pacing and the more colorful the characterizations the better. But a sex drama faces an uphill battle to capture the merest fraction of its initial success just ONE decade later, let alone five or six.
OTHER VIEWS: A Friday flick by design. An exploitation picture, hoping to tap the sensation-hungry. Produced on a minuscule budget, with a couple of charmless, second echelon leads. Expert technical hands cannot disguise lack of talent in the acting, poverty of invention in the dialogue. In the theater you can often get away with short- changing your audience, but not in the cinema. — JHR writing as George Addison.
Director: HERBERT BRENON. Screenplay: Michael Egan. Adaptation: Vina de Vesci, John Fernald. Based on the stage play by Michael Egan. Photography: Walter Harvey. Producer: Walter C. Mycroft. A British International Picture.
Not copyrighted or theatrically released in the U.S.A. but available for non-theatrical use under the title, "Family Affair". U.K. release through Associated British Picture Corporation: January 1937. Australian release through British Empire Films. 74 minutes.
SYNOPSIS: Wife forces inventor to sell out to a big corporation rather than take on the corporation by marketing his invention himself.
Brenon does his best with this, trying to give it a bit of pace, but is ultimately defeated by the fact that it's simply a photographed stage play with a great deal of the action confined to a single set. There's little you can do with two players in one set for forty minutes beyond intercutting close-ups with two-shots.
Thanks to its feminist theme, the film rode to success on the coat- tails of the play (which ran for two years in London's West End). It was made on the cheap too, with very little action outside the play's original small sitting-room set, aside from a short (but cramped) night-club sequence about 45 minutes in.
Most of the players do handle their lines with a fairish finesse. Phillips Holmes, as usual, is the chief drawback. He has the key role, but singularly lacks charm and charisma. Miss Churchill is not the most appealing of players either, but at least she has the right defiant spirit. Romney Brent in the smallish role of a henpecked husband in love with a florist (Kathleen Kelly) is the most ingratiating of a somewhat second-string, if eager cast.
I've remarked before that nothing dates so badly as sex comedies. True, they can still be amusing provided their dated philosophy and now outrageously stale situations are leavened with wit or even slapstick. And the smarter the pacing and the more colorful the characterizations the better. But a sex drama faces an uphill battle to capture the merest fraction of its initial success just ONE decade later, let alone five or six.
OTHER VIEWS: A Friday flick by design. An exploitation picture, hoping to tap the sensation-hungry. Produced on a minuscule budget, with a couple of charmless, second echelon leads. Expert technical hands cannot disguise lack of talent in the acting, poverty of invention in the dialogue. In the theater you can often get away with short- changing your audience, but not in the cinema. — JHR writing as George Addison.