"Evelyn Prentice," I believe, marks the third movie William Powell and Myrna Loy starred in together, with "Manhattan Melodrama" (1934) and "The Thin Man" (1934) being the other two.
I had a problem with "Evelyn Prentice," and it largely had to do with the set up.
From the beginning the movie was telegraphing infidelity. John Prentice (William Powell) was a busy lawyer with no time for his wife, Evelyn (Myrna Loy). I've watched enough older movies to know that a neglected wife usually means a cheating wife in the near future. A neglected wife could also signify a cheating husband who's using work as a pretense for seeing another woman. John may not have been using work as a pretense for stepping out on his old lady, but he certainly was getting a little too cozy with his client Nancy Harrison (Rosalind Russell).
While John was everywhere but home, Evelyn began being heavily pursued by a hustler named Lawrence 'Larry' Kennard (Harvey Stephens). He was putting some smooth moves on her, which she probably would've brushed aside if it weren't for her friend, Amy Drexel (Una Merkel).
Amy was the single friend who didn't know right from wrong when it came to marriages. Instead of ensuring Evelyn didn't get involved with Larry Kennard, she practically played matchmaker. She saw it as her duty to make sure Evelyn had some male company in lieu of her husband.
Some friend.
As things began to get a little too serious for Evelyn, she cut Larry off. She didn't take his calls nor did she see him again until one fateful day. The Washington Express, a passenger train company, mailed a lady's watch to the Prentices home with a note stating that they found her watch in Mr. Prentice's sleeping car. The watch was inscribed with "To Nancy, from John." It didn't take Evelyn long to realize what it meant, and she decided that having a rendezvous with Larry was the perfect response to such treachery from her husband, John.
Here's where it got fuzzy, and that was largely due to the era this movie was filmed in. If the movies were a little more explicit in the intimacy department, then there would be no ambiguity with certain things.
Amy, the matchmaking friend, took the watch to John to show him. Amy told John that Evelyn had received the watch, and he knew then that his marriage may be in trouble. Amy was basically putting John on notice for Evelyn's sake because Evelyn wouldn't do it herself. It was all too common back then for a woman to keep to herself her husband's infidelity. It was mostly a high-society behaviorism, but for the life of me I'll never understand it. It was as if making a scene was more dastardly than the infidelity. Or it was as if the woman bringing up her husband's unfaithfulness is a bigger indictment upon herself than on him. Whatever the reasoning was, I didn't like it. And it happened A LOT.
Per John, he never had an affair with Nancy. The watch thing was a set up to break up his marriage. And this is where the 1930's modesty caused problems.
The last time John and Nancy were shown together they were nose-to-nose in his sleeping car on the way to Washington D. C. The scene faded to black and that was it.
Now, I happen to know that whenever they wanted to indicate a couple was intimate, they'd show them in a room together, either kissing or close to it, then they'd fade to black. Sometimes they'd cut to birds chirping, or thunder, or some other unrelated scenery almost as if to show how passionate that night was for the two. In any case, they never show them in bed together, which is why I drew the conclusion that John HAD been intimate with Nancy. So, when John said that he told Nancy to leave that night in his sleeping car, and that the watch was a frame up, I didn't know what to think. Naturally, I had to believe John just because of the way he said it. He was so somber and serious that he had to be telling the truth. Back then they used to make it fairly obvious when someone was lying or telling the truth.
Well, this had to be good right? John didn't do anything with Nancy, so Evelyn could rest easy.
Wrong.
Evelyn already went to Larry's place and... well... again I don't know because this movie was sending a lot of mixed signals.
My first assumption, based upon hundreds of talkies watched, was that Evelyn had sex with Larry. The scene picked up with them talking as if they'd been together for sometime before already. Then, after analyzing the scene a bit more, it was more indicative that Evelyn had a notion to do something shameful, but that she thought better of it. And this was supported later by Evelyn saying that her letters to Larry could be "misunderstood."
The point of it all being that; what looked like cheating from both John and Evelyn actually was not, and 1930's social mores made it confusing. I mean, they would show couples fully dressed after sex. One-hundred-ten pound pregnant women would have babies without so much as a baby bump. And prostitutes would only be known by being out unescorted at night. I'd become so good at drawing inferences from context clues that "Evelyn Prentice" walked me right into an incorrect conclusion.
What Evelyn would unfortunately find out from Larry was that he was a cad. He was using Evelyn for her money and he was going to use her letters to blackmail her. When he threatened to tell her husband, she grabbed a gun and forced him to give her the letters. What happened between them after she grabbed the gun was a mystery because the scene cut to the apartment building hallway and we heard a shot. All implications (again with indications and implications) were that Evelyn shot Larry.
When the newspapers were released the following day we knew that Larry was killed. Evelyn even admitted to Amy that she shot and killed Larry, so how would this end?
Judith Wilson (Isabel Jewell), Larry's girlfriend who entered the apartment after Evelyn left, was arrested for killing Larry. Surely Evelyn wouldn't let Judith go down for a murder she didn't commit?
No, of course not. And furthermore, neither of them had to spend a day in prison for the murder--which was just 1930's chivalry in Hollywood script form.
As John was defending Judith, and the prosecutor was impressing upon the jury that Judith was guilty, Evelyn stood up in the galley and shouted, "No!"
She got the attention of everyone in the courtroom, but it was nothing more than a simple negation of what the prosecutor was saying.
She then ran up to the bench shouting, "Don't! You mustn't say that again!" referencing the D. A. stating that Judith should receive capital punishment.
Then, in a more reserved manner, she said, "She didn't kill him. Please don't say that again."
Instead of the judge banging his gavel and saying "Order in the court!" like we'd see most judges do, this judge (Stanley Andrews), simply asked, "What is the meaning of this? Who are you?"
"Mrs. John Prentice," she responded.
The district attorney, D. A. Farley (Frank Conroy), shouted, "Your honor, I object to this interruption!" as he rightly should've stated. Whatever Evelyn had to say, she broke all courtroom policy and her statements couldn't be accepted. If that were the case, randos would be jumping up in court all the time to refute the testimonies being given.
But this is Hollywood. This was theater.
Evelyn was allowed to interrupt the entire proceedings and testify and tell her truth, where we found out that she never did shoot Larry, she only shot at Larry. Larry struck her, she fell back, hit a wall, and the gun accidentally went off (per her testimony). John Prentice then revealed to us that TWO shots had been fired that day: one bullet went harmlessly into a wall, while the other bullet killed Larry.
Judith had, in fact, killed Larry.
How convenient. The prim Evelyn Prentice was not guilty. And what's more, nor was Judith. Even though she probably killed Larry out of jealousy, as she implied she would (more implications), John made it seem as though she shot Larry out of self-defense and did the world a favor in the process. Judith was acquitted, Evelyn was off the hook, and John and Evelyn's marriage survived it all.
I didn't like how this movie was framed at all. I don't mind misdirection for the purposes of a plot twist--some of the best movies all time have excellent plot twists--but the plot twist still has to make sense. Misdirection is one thing, and misleading is another. This movie was misleading. It was misleading with the marital affairs and it was misleading with the murder (which is something they used to do a lot back then), and I don't think it was clever. Anyone can seem clever if they give you an answer you couldn't figure out while they knew things they intentionally hid from you. The key to having a clever twist is to embed the answers within the movie while making it seem like they indicate something else. A good example of that is "The Usual Suspects" or "The Sixth Sense." "Evelyn Prentice" outright hid crucial occurrences and waited to reveal them at the end as though only John Prentice was brilliant enough to know them. That's NOT a clever plot twist, it's just lazy.
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