Summary
A marriage curdles under the chandeliers of Edwardian ennui: Zoe Blundell, stifled by her barrister husband Theodore’s frosty punctilio, flings herself into the gas-lit nocturne of London’s cabarets, her laughter a deliberate ricochet against his neglect. Their drawing-room duels of barbed courtesy escalate until Hon. Peter Mottram—amiable, rueful, perennial third-wheel—tries to broker détente; Zoe’s petulance detonates it. She flees to Italy’s sun-bleached villas where Leonard Ferris, an old flame scented of bergamot and ruin, pursues her with divorce papers fluttering like confetti. Back in the fog, Theodore, discovering that solitude is a cracked mirror, installs pretty widow Mrs. Annerly in his flat—two orphans of affection clutching at warmth. Ferris’s machinations entangle Ethel Pierpont, whose matriarchal spider schemes for a titled match. Mottram re-enters, stage-left, armed with whisky, opera tickets, and the stubborn hope that two fractured egos might tessellate again. Reconciliation glimmers—not as blissful amnesia but as weary, adult recognition that love is less a rose than a stubborn weed growing through flagstones.
Synopsis
Zoe Blundell, peeved at the seeming negligence of her husband Theodore, retaliates by spending most of her evenings away from home, usually in the company of men. Theodore, not sufficiently impressed with the truth of the old adage, "There is safety in number," takes issue with her, with the result that quarrel after quarrel occurs. Hon. Peter Mottram, an old friend of Theodore's, attempts to establish a reconciliation between them and almost succeeds, until Zoe's petulance overturns his plans, and a wider breach than even is the result. Finally they separate and Zoe goes to Italy, where she is followed by an old flame, Leonard Ferris, who seeks to bring about a divorce between Zoe and her husband. In the meantime Theodore has found that although experience seems to have proved that it is impossible to live with a woman, neither can he live without one, and he is discovered living in a flat with a pretty young widow, Mrs. Annerly. Several complications occur, involving Leonard Ferris and Ethel Pierpont, whose mother has been angling for Ferris as a son-in-law. Peter Mottram again steps in and this time succeeds in bringing about a reconciliation between the estranged pair. - Moving Picture World, September 25, 1920.
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