SIN TAKES A HOLIDAY
US, 1930, 81 minutes, Black-and-white.
Constance Bennett, Kenneth MacKenna?, Basil Rathbone, is a soup it's.
Directed by Paul L.Stein.
This is a Pre-Code? film, reflecting quite a moral and some immoral behaviour amongst rather decadent men and women in New York society. It is a kind of drawing room comedy, somewhat in the Noel Coward vein, though lacking its wit. The film was directed by Austrian-born Paul D. Stein, and director in Berlin who then moved to the United States and for a career in Britain.
The star of the film is Constance Bennett, playing something of a demure secretary to a highflying lawyer, involved in all kinds of divorce cases, in some of which he participates personally. There are many scenes at the beginning where the secretary sits and observes this so-called smart set, their chatter, their fickle relationships, the many divorces, the going to the theatre…
She is a touch of dowdy in her manner, boards with a girlfriend played by comedian Zasu Pitts. But, she has an attachment to her boss, Kenneth MacKenna?. He gets the bright idea of avoiding entanglement with one of his clients who has set her sights on him. He proposes a contract for marriage, for one year, Sylvia, the secretary, getting an allowance and being absolutely free. He urges her to go to Paris.
Timid at first, she finds she is taken up by society. One of her boss’s friends, Reggie Durand, is curious about her, attracted to her, offers her company and accommodation, finally intends to marry her. She decides she has to get back to the United States and test out her love for her boss who, in the meantime, is keeping company with a divorcee who becomes very jealous when she hears the news of the wife. She is quite hostile when Sylvia returns and there is something of a showdown at a social reception. Reggie decides to leave and give up the fight for Sylvia. Sylvia decides to stay with her boss. Actually, given the characters of each and the way the screenplay develops them, this is not entirely credible and one could wonder how long it will take before their divorce!
Kenneth MacKenna? is the boss and, rather surprisingly, in an early role in Hollywood, South African born Basil Rathbone plays Reggie. In fact, it would seem that he plays Basil Rathbone who could be very much the same be it Sherlock Holmes or a villain sword fighting from the 1930s Warner Brothers action show to such parodies as Danny Kaye’s entertaining The Court Jester.
