Marketic It's no definitive masterpiece but it's damn close.

Allison Davies The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Anoushka Slater While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

Mathilde the Guild Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

st-shot This mawkish stilted chick flic from the 30s is concrete proof that they made them as bad back then as they do today (for a lot more money and with a longer shooting schedule). On the face of it Consolation Marriage is about a pair of progressive adults burned by love in the past who enter into an open marriage to protect themselves but find it hard to extricate themselves from it when both ex-beaus come a calling again.Consolation Marriage might have had a chance to resonate with its controversial theme if its bohemian protagonists didn't project such middle class personas. Irene Dunne's Mary makes a sorry attempt at being care free especially when she's deciding to jettison her 18 month old. Pat O'Brien in the meantime comes across cold and unemotional as if listening to confessions. A blond Myrna Loy looks alluring enough but not when she's reduced to fluttering her eyes and mouthing sappy lines like "Oh darling look at this glorious night, it was made for us" to a champion of the Catholic guilt complex. Director John Sloane does little to inspire his actors who morosely deliver their lines in two shot filled with pregnant pauses and embarrassed looks. Sloane manages to zap the energy out of nearly every shot while his clumsy cuts from scene to scene plays havoc with time and place. If there is any consolation to Consolation Marriage it is that Ms. Dunne at times rises above the material and Pat's anemic passion to project an effective and ideal portrait of a modern woman in turmoil. Thing is she does it just as well in better pictures.

skiddoo Dunne and O'Brien's joyful relationship was fun to watch. Their patter was witty. They hit all the right notes. The others, well, not so much. This was a movie about modern couples trying to find their way through life and love, self-consciously not old-fashioned, finding out what worked for them and what was only good in theory or for others. There were no conclusions drawn that their choices should be the choices for everyone.Indeed, right and wrong was a complete non-issue. Leave your baby or not--up to you. Change spouses like socks or stick with the one you have--up to you.Then-current psychology was brought into it, that a baby would grow up happier if the mother left to be happy than if the mother stayed and was resentful. And that the mother would miss the baby more than the other way around.While it does have a happy ending, that makes sense considering the fact that the other two in the quadrangle were drips and for some people being in a marriage and having a baby DOES change their point of view in regard to past infatuations. And who would want to lose such an upbeat intimate partnership that included mutual love for a child? It was just a matter of recognizing that they had stumbled into a successful relationship in spite of themselves. I don't know if the two men trying to get them back together toward the end were gay or not but they acted as if they might have been. Gays and lesbians weren't uncommon in movies of that era but a person can read too much into things.I love pre-Code movies. They illustrate that liberalism doesn't go in a straight progression through time. My parents told me stories about people they knew that showed that even the average Joe and Mary on the street could kick over the traces of "the old morality." If we didn't have these movies, and books, of the era we might believe that most people in the past clung to the conventions like limpets when in fact they were transitioning, too. We are still trying to figure out the answers to the questions raised a hundred or so years ago, such as how important is individual happiness and who makes the rules.The last lines were fun, too. Grrr. Go get him, Irene!

MartinHafer The so-called "Pre-Code" films were made up to about 1935 and were called this because although Hollywood DID have a long list of standards, they were pretty much ignored until an updated Production Code was adopted. These Pre-Code films were some times VERY racy and not at all what the average person these days thinks these early films were like, as some included nudity, foul language, racy topics and violence! While CONSOLATION MARRIAGE was made in this era and has SOME elements that would not have been allowed had it been made just a few years later, it is a relatively benign film--with no nudity or violence. Instead, its main plot line would NOT have been acceptable, as it concerns a marriage of convenience that is essentially an "open marriage". If either partner became dissatisfied or found someone else, then they both agreed the marriage was over and it was okay to leave! This rather selfish or amoral view of marriage NEVER would have appeared in films during the next several decades! This strange marriage contract, it seems, resulted from BOTH Pat O'Brien and Irene Dunne being dumped by their respective fiancés. So, out of loneliness, they were drawn together--at least until something better came along! And, later, BOTH Dunne's and O'Brien's old flames return and want them! And, at this point the couple have a choice to make--leave or stick around. This is further complicated by the fact that they now have a baby! How this whole thing is sorted out is, despite it being Pre-Code, rather conventional and predictable--as well as overly long and a tad dull. That's because this type of plot was, believe it or not, often copied! I have seen several very similar movies involving open marriages in the early 1930s and in each case, the film ends EXACTLY where you'd expect. Because of this derivative nature, it is a very skip-able film--especially if you've seen others like it.FYI--It's interesting to see that in this film Myrna Loy is a blonde!

David (Handlinghandel) Since I first saw "The Awful Truth," Irene Dunne has been one of the few performers whose presence in a movie will make me watch it. No matter what.This one is a real case of no matter what.(For the record, the others include Jean Harlow, Jean Arthur, and Constance Bennett.)This is a women's picture, directed at a snail's pace.In it, Ms. Dunne sports an exceptionally unflattering hair design, which makes her virtually unrecognizable as the star of such classics as the above-mentioned "Awful Truth," Theodora Goes Wild," and "Showboat."She looks like Edna May Oliver. She looks like Eleanor Roosevelt (my greatest heroine of the past two or three hundred years but hardly a beauty.)In this poky tale, Dunne actually leaves her child briefly. The child is indeed pudgy and very unappealing but women must have stalked out of theaters at that point.She and Pat O'Brien are not the most likely of couples but they are meant in the plot not to be. They are certainly more believable than Dunne and Spencer Tracy in unendurable "A Guy Named Joe."