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Indiscreet

Screening on Film
Directed by Leo McCarey.
With Gloria Swanson, Ben Lyon, Arthur Lake.
US, 1931, 35mm, black & white, 72 min.

In one of her first talkies, Gloria Swanson stars as a self-proclaimed "modern girl with an old-fashioned conscience" who dumps her cad of a boyfriend for a writer who turns out to be not quite the free thinker he (or she) thought he was. Difficult to see for many years, Indiscreet has been rediscovered in recent years as part of the revival of interest in pre-Code Hollywood. McCarey's direction is noteworthy for turning what could have been a stage-bound melodrama into an early example of screwball comedy. And as with Harold Lloyd in The Milky Way, the filmmaker shows an ability to translate a silent star's skills to the sound era.

Part of film series

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Leo McCarey,
Screwball and Beyond

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