Another Language (1933)

After eloping with her new husband (Robert Montgomery), a free spirited artist (Helen Hayes) discovers her new husband is a mama's boy. His manipulative mother (Louise Closser Hale) is determined to keep her apron strings tied to her son. Based on the play by Rose Franken (best known for the play CLAUDIA) and directed by Edward H. Griffith (THE SKY'S THE LIMIT). I enjoyed this pre code drama which seemed headed toward an Americanized version of Ibsen's A DOLL'S HOUSE but chickens out in the last five minutes when it gives us this phony "happy" ending. I wish it had the guts to stick with it and end where it was going rather than take the homogenized safe road. One can't help but wonder why Hayes insists on staying with the selfish and cloddish Montgomery instead of running off with his sensitive nephew (John Beal), who loves her. I suppose it was obliged by the sanctioned morality codes of the era, the sanctity of home and marriage etc. With Henry Travers, Margaret Hamilton and Willard Robertson.