In a Monastery Garden (1932) is delightfully dusty British melodrama

If you stumble across In a Monastery Garden from 1932, you're probably either a film historian or you got very lost on YouTube late at night. 😅

It is absolutely worth a look if you love creaky British melodramas where everyone speaks like they have a marble in their mouth, but anyone expecting modern pacing will hate it and turn it off in five minutes.

The plot is basically a massive soap opera about two brothers who both write music and love the same woman, which naturally leads to greed, murder, and some very dramatic organ playing.

It's classic good versus evil, but with 100% more tweed and polite nodding.

The acting are a bit stiff in places, but what really caught my eye was how incredibly serious everyone takes themselves.

The bad brother is so obviously evil from the second he walks on screen, sneering like a cartoon villain who is about to tie someone to a train track.

Honestly, the whole setup reminded me a bit of the heavy-handed drama in The Spider, another oldie that doesn't know the meaning of the word "subtle."

Odd Little Moments

There is this one scene where a character is playing the piano, and the camera just stares at his hands for what feels like three minutes.

I swear you can see the actor trying to remember the next notes. 🎹

Also, the Marie Rambert Dancers show up for a performance that feels like it belongs in a completely different movie.

They just start leaping around while the main characters look on with these polite, slightly frozen smiles.

It is so wonderfully awkward.

And let's talk about Alan Napier, who plays a minor role here long before he became Alfred the butler in the 1960s Batman show.

He has got this incredible posture, like he's constantly trying to look over a very tall fence.

The sound quality on the print I watched was pretty rough, full of pops and hisses that made some of the dialogue sound like frying bacon.

But somehow, that just added to the charm of the whole thing.

If you've seen other creaky dramas from this era, like The Lonely Road, you know exactly what kind of dusty vibe to expect here.

It's not a masterpiece, and the ending wraps up so fast it'll make your head spin.

But for a lazy Sunday afternoon, it’s a weirdly cozy way to spend an hour.

Things I jotted down while watching:

• The organ music gets incredibly loud whenever someone is thinking about doing something bad.
• Everyone wears suits that look like they weigh fifty pounds.
• That one lady's hat is so big it deserves its own credit in the cast list.

Just don't expect it to change your life.