Regarding The Guardsman

I recently watched The Guardsman (1931), the film adapation of the Lunt's best-known vehicle (at the time) and the only film they made.

It makes sense in the early days of talkies that MGM would call on the famous acting couple to recreate their stage roles. And when the film wasn't a hit, I can see why Hollywood didn't use them again, and perhaps why Lynn and Alfred were more than happy to flee to the footlights.

It's a pretty basic story, adapted from the Molnar play.  A well-known stage couple (not unlike the Lunts--in fact, the movie starts with them performing Maxwell's Anderson's Elizabeth The Queen, which they'd just been doing in New York) are fighting backstage.  The husband tests his wife's fidelity by pretending to woo her as a Russian guardsman.

It's not bad, exactly, but it isn't exciting like the best films of the era.  It's opened up, yet the story still seems stagebound.  But the reason to watch it today, and maybe the reason it doesn't work then, is the Lunts.  Talented as they are, they're trying too hard.  Good movie acting usually gives you the feeling the characters are letting you watch them, while the Lunts act at you. (I realize they're playing a theatrical couple--makes you wonder how they'd be in different roles, though the bit of Anderson at the start doesn't give you much hope.)  I can see how a lot of the stuff would be delightful on stage, but that's a different medium.  Indeed, what was considered good stage acting back them seems forced and mannered today, especially with the overdone elocution . (Movie acting has changed, too, but we're used to the styles of the time.)  Also, they're a goodlooking couple, but not quite movie star glamorous.

Perhaps it's because I never got used to the Lunts as screen performers, but they seem pretty easily outclassed by the rest of the cast, character actors we'd see a lot more of--Roland Young, Zasu Pitts, Maude Eburne and Herman Bing.