The Divine Lady
US (1929): Comedy
The Divine Lady concerns the various winds of fortune and romance that carry a girl of a lower social rank to high society and then exile.
Accompanying her mother to a new job as a cook in the home of aristocrat Charles Greville (Ian Keith), Emma Hart (Corinne Griffith) finds the course of her life forever changed by her mother's handsome new employer. Seeing great promise in the beautiful girl, Greville grooms her into a lady, and then passes her on as an enticing diversion to an elderly uncle, Sir William Hamilton (H.B. Warner), serving as British ambassador at the Court of Naples. But Sir Hamilton becomes so smitten by Emma he eventually proposes, transforming a poor peasant girl into a lady.
Following her transformation into Lady Hamilton, Emma then finds true, illicit love in the arms of a British naval hero of the Napoleonic wars, Lord Horatio Nelson (Victor Varconi), who destroys the French fleet on the Nile and bottles Napoleon up in Egypt. Despite the potentially scandalous fact that in real life, both Lord and Lady remained married during their love affair, the film dwells with a surprising insistence on their erotic, adulterous passion, at one point showing scenes of breaking waves and then a calm sunset as the couple embrace. When social scorn makes them pariahs, Lady Hamilton and Captain Nelson retire to his country estate. (Felicia Feaster, TCM.com)
For the best version of the story of Hamilton and Nelson, see the wonderful Vivian Leigh-Laurence Olivier movie That Hamilton Woman (1941).
3 nominations, 1 Award
· Best Directing 1928-29: Frank Lloyd (co-nomination with Drag and Weary River. (Lloyd received the Award for The Divine Lady.)
· Actress 1928-29: Corinne Griffith
· Cinematography 1928-29: John F. Seitz