A Quiet Comedy From RKO

Clive Brook and Diana Wynyard Together Again in Where Sinners Meet (1934)

Aristocrat Clive Brook kidnaps runaway couples and imprisons them until change of heart is effected. This is played for laughs, obviously. Otherwise, Brook would be Leslie Banks, When Sinners Meet a civilized variant on The Most Dangerous Game. It's based on a play, obvious again thanks to endless and stagebound talk. RKO did such teacuppery by pallet-loads; they had affiliated theatres to supply, and every release couldn't be King Kong or Top Hat. Where Sinners Meet is enlivened by funny folk in support: Reginald Owen, Billie Burke, Alan Mowbray --- and Brook understates his humor to good effect. He and Diana Wynyard had been a popular team in Fox's year-before Cavalcade, so this was something of a reunion. Some of wit is nicely pointed, Where Sinners Meet's May 1934 release just under a wire of strict Code enforcement. Photoplay, however, might have been too generous, praising the film's "thoroughly paralyzing comedy situations and brilliant dialogue." Interesting to think that source play The Dover Road (written by A.A. Milne, of Winnie The Pooh fame, and first presented in 1921) may never see light of stages again, at least in the US, and not for lack of merit, but because of a changed culture that has dated it badly. We could say the same, I suppose, about nine-tenths of playwriting from earlier eras.