Based on a play by Somerset Maugham, 1929’s Charming Sinners takes place amongst the very rich.

Kathryn Miles (Ruth Chatterton) is married to Robert Miles (Clive Brook).  Robert is wealthy and a respected businessman and, through her marriage, Kathryn is also wealthy and …. well, she’s not quite respected.  The fact of the matter is that everyone is gossiping about the fact that Robert is cheating on Kathryn.  Kathryn denies that Robert is being unfaithful but she knows that he is.  She also knows that Robert is cheating with her best friend, Anne-Marie Whitley (Mary Nolan).  Even when Anne-Marie’s husband, George (Montagu Love), comes to suspect that Anne-Marie is cheating with Robert, Kathryn tells George that it isn’t true and defends her cad of a husband.

Why is Kathryn doing this?  As Kathryn explains it, she doesn’t feel that marriage necessarily means that you have to love someone.  Kathryn married Robert for the money and the status and, as long as she has that, she’s willing to overlook Robert’s dalliances.  Admitting that Robert is cheating would obligate her to go through a divorce and potentially lose everything that she has.  If this film had been released just a few years later than it was, the Production Code would have insisted that Kathryn suffer for her less-than-reverent attitude towards the institution of marriage.  Since this is a pre-code film, Kathryn is portrayed as being strong and determined.  What the Production Code would have deemed a drama, the pre-code era considered to be a comedy.

Still, Kathryn does get revenge on her husband by openly flirting with a former lover, Karl Kraley (William Powell, handsome and suave as ever).  Kathryn also makes some money on her own, proving to her husband that she could be a success even if she hadn’t married him.  Kathryn informs Robert that she is going to be living her own life, even if they are married.  And if Kathryn wants to take a lover, that’s her decision.

And good for Kathryn!  Seriously, Robert is so smug and sure of himself that it’s deeply satisfying to watch as Kathryn reveals that Robert was never as clever as he thought it was.  Though the film does not end with the dramatic divorce that some might expect, it does end with Kathryn taking control of her own life and making her own decisions about how she’s going to live it.  That type of ending is rare enough today.  One can only imagine how audiences in 1929 reacted to it.

But is the film itself any good, you may be asking.  It’s an early sound picture and while the cast all proves their ability to handle dialogue, the largely stationary camera often makes the film feel like a filmed play (which is largely what it was).  Like many pre-code films, the emphasis here is on how the rich have better clothes and better homes than the majority of the people watching the movie.  That’s not a problem for me.  I like looking at nice clothes and wonderfully decorated houses.  Some others may dismiss this film as just being about the problems of the rich but my personal opinion is that everyone has problems.  Wouldn’t you rather have problems as a wealthy person than a poor one?  The most important thing is that the film features two of the best actors of Hollywood’s early Golden Age, Ruth Chatteron and William Powell, and they both give excellent and charming performances.

Charming Sinners is a bit of time capsule and probably not for everyone.  If you’re not interested in the film’s era, it probably won’t hold your attention.  But, to a fashionable history nerd like me, Charming Sinners definitely had its charms.