Lady with a Past (1932)

(On Cable TV, September 2022) When I take a look at the basic building blocks of Lady with a Past, it strikes me that I should like the film more than the mild entertainment I got out of it. It’s a pre-Code comedy (always a good beginning!) in which a goody-two-shoes young woman figures out that she would be far more attractive to men if she invented herself a more sordid life history, and starts lying in order to make herself look more interesting. It works so well that one of the suitors commits suicide, which is the kind of plot point that would disappear a few years later with the introduction of the Production Code. Constance Bennett plays our protagonist skillfully—introducing her as a bookish wallflower feels like an invitation to be patient for when she will unleash her usual inner vixen. But even with some decent dialogue along the way, Lady with a Past never took off for me—despite a few highlights (such as a dream sequence), it feels a bit dull in its incisiveness, somewhat more boring than expected with that kind of set-up and the opportunities still open to Pre-Code screenwriters. Maybe it’ll work better during a later second viewing.