Popular reviews

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  Review by sher ★★★

  anyone who cheats on kay francis is dead to me.... must rewatch 'random harvest' immediately so ronald colman can win me over again

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  Review by Gentry ★★★ 1

  “This sex business is just so much nonsense.”

  When the girls are away, Ronnie Colman must play. With wife (Kay Francis) and sister (Florine McKinney) vacationing in Venice, James Warlock (Colman)—more than a little bit resentful of being left home alone, more than a little bit egged on by old slut Henry Stephenson—engages in some extramarital shopgirl shenanigans. He tries his hardest to be a good boy, but he’s got the seven year itch, he sees Ms. Doris Lea (Phyllis Barry, in her film debut) in a bathing suit and, well, she is a shopgirl (it’s always a shopgirl), so he is doomed to cheat. Important to note that barristers used to be such important members of the British community…

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  Review by Gentry ★★½ 4

  “Thank goodness I married a man who knows what I have on.”

  This is clearly the Ronald Coleman show. And he’s pretty good as the prudish barrister tempted by the dark side (a shop girl). But if you’ve been following along, you know I’m really only in these for my girl Kay Francis. I can’t help but think they should have swapped the Doris and Clemency roles, with Francis playing the “other woman” (the meatier role) and Phyllis Barry playing the spurned wife. Instead, Francis is stuck in Venice for most of the film, on holiday with her playgirl sister, doing much of nothing.

  There’s a subtle hint in the film that Clemency wants her husband to cheat on her,…

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  Review by Robert Hayes ★★★½

  Pretty good for the first hour or so. Not sure if I like the ending or not.

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  Review by Fint ★★★

  Kay Francis is not an actress who has aged particularly well. Her early 30s moment in the sun has seen her eclipsed by much more natural or much more flamboyant performers. She has a classy presence but telegraphs her emotions too obviously.

  In Cynara she is Ronnie Colman's wife who is done wrong by him. Not because he is one of the dissolute rogues that my friend Jamawive is so partial to, but because he is too gosh darned nice to tell his over-enthusiastic shopgirl admirer where to get off. It is a morality tale about the wages of infidelity being tragedy, so put that in your dissolute pipe and smoke it. It's not in King Vidor's top rank since it fails to rouse the blood but it is effectively presented, well acted by Colman and features a lovely scene of a cinema audience going gaga over a Chaplin silent.

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  Review by Samantha Glaraga ★★★★★ 3

  If you’re sensitive like me, don’t watch Frances Marion films. You will end the film absolutely wrecked. My heart physically hurts. 

  The last words he says: “Forgive me”

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  Review by Will Remmers ★★★★★

  Vidor shoots yet another silent film that happens to have dialogue and, naturally, Colman understands that perfectly! But! -- Colman's performance also felt so much like a proto-Dirk Bogarde one. Anytime you're not convinced by Ron, imagine it's Dirk doing the same exact thing with the same mannerisms in a film made thirty years later (an era that is lauded for heralding the arrival of morally questionable protagonists! -- for some reason, people seem to think that filmmakers in the 30s were naïve and that they sided with their protagonists and expected us to do likewise!). Now you are convinced!! Kay is wonderful here, particularly her left eye. Watching a Goldwyn pre-code feels like an alternate universe after spending so much time with the bigger-ergo-cheaper studios. This feels intentionally aimed at being high art. Frances Marion is there, after all.

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  Review by hellohildy ★★★

  I never would have imagined respectable, mild-mannered Henry Stephenson playing a horny old dude out picking up shopgirls and goading/tricking his married friend into following his lead. Wow 😳

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  Review by James ★★★

  A not particularly noteworthy pre-code melodrama, but well acted by a dapper Ronald Coleman as a mild-mannered, upper class barrister and an adorable Kay Francis as his loving wife, with flashes of inspired direction from the ever stylish King Vidor.

  Adapted by Frances Marion, the film offers a frank and honest depiction of an extramarital affair, as well as an observation on class with Coleman's character falling for a working class shop girl played by Phyllis Barry. Vidor's directorial elegance was never entirely lost to the sound era, here he includes some graceful match cuts, smooth tracking shots and romantic compositions, though most interesting is the expressionistic top down view of the staircase that appears twice in the film, a…

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  Review by Quinn

  John Tring might be one of the fakest “friends” in cinema history. So much pain and misery could have been avoided if Tring hadn’t pressured his best friend, content in seven years of marriage, to have an affair! And to what end? Debauchery for the sake of debauchery? Men......

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  Review by feels_for_reels ★★½

  This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

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  Review by Hattie ★★★

  Nice performances from Ronald Colman and Kay Francis.

  Cynara has its moments but, to the most part, it's not the most memorable of pre-Code films.