EXTRAVAGANCE

US, 1930, 71 minutes, Black-and-white.
Owen Moore, June Collyer, Lloyd Hughes, Dorothy Christie.
Directed by Phil Rosen.

Extravagance is an early sound film, but a small supporting feature. It is Pre-Code? in its presentation of sexual mores and behaviour in American society. The treatment would not have been so explicit five years later. The film was directed by Phil Rosen who two decades earlier had worked with Thomas Edison.

The extravagance of the title applies to the two female characters. One, Alice, has been spoiled by her mother, given everything, the mother keeping up appearances. She has had many suitors but decides to marry a reliable businessman. However, it soon emerges that she has no idea of money, buys everything she wants, continually persuades her husband to give her money, but has a fixation on a sable coat. The other woman is a friend, Esther, just as extravagant, unfaithful to her husband, having an affair with a wealthy bachelor – who enables her to have a sable coat.

Alice is petulant, has arguments with her husband, flirts with the wealthy bachelor, place cards and he invests her winnings, getting her enough money – to buy a sable coat. Her husband is disillusioned and the two of them quarrel.

Even more petulant, she decides to divorce her husband and go on a cruise with the bachelor. On the other hand, the bachelor’s former mistress, Esther, becomes jealous and possessive, confrontative.

There is a solution to the husband’s financial problems – the sable coat. When her mother explains to Alice that her husband had been giving her financial support, that he is having troubles, she decides to sell the coat and finance him. She also goes to visit her friend – and witnesses one of those sudden dramatic actions where the disillusioned husband returns and shoots his wife and shoots himself. And this, of course, is the catalyst for reconciliation.