The Fast Set

In the brittle, champagne-soaked atmosphere of the Roaring Twenties, William de Mille’s 'The Fast Set' serves as a caustic anatomical study of marital entropy. Richard Sones, a man whose soul is tethered to the silent sanctuary of his library and the cerebral rigor of his prose, finds himself increasingly estranged from his spouse, Margaret. While Richard navigates the quietude of intellectual pursuit, Margaret is seduced by the frenetic, sybaritic pulse of the 'fast set'—a coterie of socialites where superficiality is the primary currency. Enter Ernest Steele, a seasoned predator of the bouidour whose specialty lies in the calculated cultivation of 'neglected' wives. Recognizing the yawning chasm in his marriage, Richard eschews conventional confrontation for a more avant-garde psychological warfare. He introduces Mona, a streetwalker, into Margaret’s gilded social circle, presenting her as a 'professional' whose honest trade exposes the dilettantish moral bankruptcy of the assembled guests. This social hand-grenade triggers a sequence of domestic upheaval, leading to a divorce petition that eventually forces the opportunistic Steele to retreat into the shadows of self-preservation, inadvertently facilitating a fragile reconciliation.