Evelyn Prentice (1934)

(On Cable TV, March 2021) The pairing of William Powell and Myrna Loy would be glorious in The Thin Man, but you get another glimpse at their chemistry in Evelyn Prentice, a substantially darker melodrama dealing with contemplated affairs, attempted blackmail and definite murder. Powell is impeccable as a high-powered lawyer who neglects his wife by working too much. Loy’s character, exasperated by loneliness and motivated by an overly affectionate client of her husband, starts looking around for company and ends up manipulated by a seductive poet. When he is found murdered shortly after visiting him for a final time, it’s her husband who ends up involved in a middle act filled with dramatic ironies. By the time he realizes that she may be involved, the film ends on high-powered courtroom drama as he manages to forgive his wife, find the truth and resolve the situation to everyone’s benefit. Evelyn Prentice is short and punchy, not quite going for comedy but not without its share of amusingly ironic moments. Powell and Loy are great even at lower intensity, and the film has the well-polished rhythm of mid-1930s studio pictures, with scarcely an element out of place. Modern audiences will notice that there’s definitely a double standard at play in how adultery affects wife and husband differently, but that’s almost a given for movies of that time. Still, it doesn’t affect the film’s impact as much as you’d think: Powell and Loy are good enough as to make even humdrum material feel much better, and indeed the film is seldom any more enjoyable than when Powell goes on a legalistic rampage, or when Loy wrestles with conflicting emotions. Evelyn Prentice isn’t a great film and it definitely pales in comparison to the duo’s work in the contemporary Thin Man series, but it’s an entertaining time nonetheless.