Summary
On the marble chessboard of 1920s state politics, ambition is a corrosive cologne that Philip Pemberton douses himself with until the scent eclipses every other human trace. His marriage, once a living sonnet, calcifies into a neglected footnote while he chases the governorship with the fervor of a pilgrim chasing relics. Enter Horton, the local kingmaker whose cigar smoke curls like malevolent incense around ballot boxes; he drafts a baroque stratagem, hiring two confidence tricksters to masquerade as the sybaritic Baron and Baroness De Ville. Their mission: seduce Dorothy Pemberton’s trust, stage a compromising tableau at a roadside inn, and freeze the scene in a snapshot potent enough to throttle Philip’s campaign. The Baroness, a chameleon in silk, feigns a fainting spell; the Baron bursts in with theatrical outrage; Dorothy awakens to find herself the unwitting nexus of a scandal still wet with varnish. Horton’s ultimatum is simple—withdraw or watch your private life become tomorrow’s screaming headline. Yet the narrative, like mercury, refuses to hold its shape: a tenacious detective, shadowing the counterfeit nobles through velvet-draped corridors, crashes the farce at the critical beat, clapping handcuffs on the Baroness and vaporizing Horton’s leverage. In the sudden hush that follows, Philip’s eyes refocus on the wife he has treated as background drapery; contrition spills from him in torrents, and Dorothy, whose forgiveness is less a garment than a weather system, grants absolution with the same quiet gravity that ends a drought.
Synopsis
So engrossed by his desire to be elected governor, Philip Pemberton neglects his wife Dorothy. Horton, a political boss opposes Pemberton's candidacy and conspires to prevent his election. To accomplish this, Horton hires two crooks to pose as the Baron and Baroness De Ville to gain Dorothy's confidence. One day while out motoring with Dorothy, the Baroness feigns illness and is taken to the bedroom of an inn, where her husband unexpectedly appears. When the Baroness steps out, the frame-up for a potential scandal is completed. Horton threatens to blackmail Pemberton with the situation unless he drops out of the race, but at the last minute a detective who has been tracking the Baroness appears and arrests her, exposing the Horton plot. Pemberton then realizes he has neglected his wife and begs her forgiveness, which she grants.
Review Excerpt
"The reels of Why Women Sin unspool like lacquered playing cards fanned across a green-felt table—each frame glossy, scented with intrigue, and slippery enough to escape the grasp of anyone who believes politics and intimacy inhabit separate wings of the soul. Released in the waning twilight of the silent era, this 1926 curio directed by a workmanlike yet intermittently inspired team (Lonergan on story duty, Murphy orchestrating the visuals) lands somewhere between morality play and pulp fever dr..."
