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6.4/10
Senior Film Conservator
A definitive 6.4/10 rating for a film that redefined the boundaries of cult cinema. Virtuous Husband remains a cornerstone of transgressive art.
If you have seventy-five minutes to spare and love dusty, weird pre-code movies, Virtuous Husband is absolutely worth a watch today. But if you can't stand stagey early-talkies where people stand around like they're glued to the floor, you will probably hate this with a passion. 🙄
The whole setup is just so bizarrely frustrating. This rich guy named Daniel gets married, but his dead mother left him a giant stack of letters telling him exactly how to behave as a husband.
He actually brings these letters on his honeymoon. Instead of paying attention to his new wife, he sits in an armchair reading mommy's advice while she waits for him. It is incredibly wild.
Elliott Nugent plays Daniel, and honestly, he has the most punchable face in this movie. He plays the character with this stiff, self-righteous squint that makes you want to shake some sense into him.
You keep waiting for his wife, played by the lovely Betty Compson, to just throw a heavy vase at his head. Honestly, she almost does.
I kept thinking about how different this is from other comedies of the era, like Wife Savers, which went for much broader slapsitck. This one is more like a weird psychological horror disguised as a polite society farce.
The real saving grace here is Jean Arthur. She isn't even the main star, but she just lights up the screen every time she walks in with that squeaky, crackly voice of hers.
There's a scene where she's just lounging around, being incredibly sarcastic, and it makes the rest of the movie feel ten times livelier. You can tell she was going to be a massive star very soon.
The pacing is pretty uneven, though. Some scenes just drag on because the characters have to explain every little feeling they have out loud.
Like, we get it, Daniel is obsessed with his mom's ghost-opinions. We don't need three different scenes of him explaining his 'moral duty' to a bunch of older men in suits.
Also, Tully Marshall shows up as a grumpy old man and he is always a treat. He looks like a cartoon vulture and I love him for it.
I did notice the audio quality is pretty rough in the middle section. There is this constant low hum during the garden scene that made me think my speakers were dying.
It's not a masterpiece like The Road to Paradise, which has a much tighter grip on its drama. But for a lazy Sunday afternoon, it's a fascinating relic of a time when Hollywood was still figuring out how to make talkies funny.
Just don't expect a lot of action. It's mostly people in nice clothes arguing in giant, empty-looking living rooms. 🤷♂️
IMDb —
1916
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