One Hour With You

One Hour With You (1932)
[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0023303/]

The Gist:
A bedroom farce of the early talkie days, billed as Ernst Lubitsch's last pre-Code musical. The most obvious difference from this film, which benefits from the quote "sophistication" of Lubitsch direction, and later subsequent Hollywood films that would explore similar territory is the morality of characters. Most films would foist an unfair situation on their protagonist, a husband who is innocent of infidelity but must act suspiciously and cover his tracks through plot contrivance, thereby heightening the tension. Here, the husband must cover his tracks of an actual affair, and we as an audience must go along with the husband and wife eventually reconciling in a somewhat artificial way. In a sense I find this simultaneously refreshing and disconcerting, mainly because the approach is so comedic that it really neglects the impact of the husband cheating on his wife. However, on the other hand it is nice to see a film challenge the norms and the music is reasonably catchy. It's doesn't challenge views in adultery as strongly as The Awful Truth, but it's an interesting film nonetheless.