Cubussoli Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

FeistyUpper If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

CrawlerChunky In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

Loui Blair It's a feast for the eyes. But what really makes this dramedy work is the acting.

SimonJack "The Divorce of Lady X" is one of the funniest comedy dramas about mistaken identity. It also has a serious undertone about deceit and playing with another's emotions. Laurence Olivier's character is at the mercy of Merle Oberon's throughout, with much humor. The plot is superb. The story opens on a foggy night in London at the Royal Park Hotel. The events after that are the most humorous. Everard Logan (Olivier) is an attorney (English barrister) who falls for Leslie Steele (Oberon), whom he thinks is married. (He sees a ring on the fourth finger of her left hand.) She doesn't give him her last name. Infidelity hasn't entered the picture, but he wants her to divorce her husband and marry him. While she also falls for him, she decides to continue a charade with his mistaken notion that she's married. We don't know why she does this, except for playfulness and/or wanting to find out more about him first. Logan later takes a divorce case for a fellow club member, Lord Mere (Ralph Richardson). The circumstances of his grounds for divorce are identical to the circumstances of the foggy night when Logan met Leslie. Lady Mere is an American and so is Leslie. So, Logan thinks that she is Lady Mere. All of the circumstances continue to feed Logan's mistaken notions and heighten the charade. He learns of Lady Mere's sordid past.Logan is distraught to think of the young, seemingly innocent Leslie as such a loose, racy woman. Lady Mere's first husband was Wild Man Cavanaugh, a professional wrestler whom she "got rid of in Reno," says Lord Mere. Her next husband was Baron de Brussac, whom she then left to marry Lord Lauderdale. Lord Mere was the last. But during the four marriages in five years were four affairs -- a Mr. Miller, Sir Mendosa from the Argentine, a second Mr. Miller, and the current Limmet. Lord Steele, a judge and Leslie's grandfather, warns her about playing games with a man's heart. He asks her, "What made you play the woman with the past? Because you felt you could wear your imaginary adventures like an alluring costume, didn't you? Things in the past – they were a great success. The danger is that when the costume falls off, the young man may look at you and wonder what on earth he ever saw in such an innocent slip of a girl."Indeed, she almost loses her man. With the real Lady Mere, Lord Mere and her grandfather, she surprises Logan by having Lady Mere greet him and introduce them. This film has a couple of very funny courtroom scenes. And, there are several scenarios with clever dialog and some very funny exchanges. "The Divorce of Lady X" was made in 1938, by which time film quality had greatly improved. Yet, this film suffers with poor production quality in some areas. It seems stagy in places and the sound quality is poor throughout with echoes. At times, Olivier's quickened dialog drops off and is difficult to hear. Past audiences must have had a hard time following the dialog. I watched this on DVD and was able to back up several times to hear things that were hard to hear. Even then, one struggles to make out some words. Logan was spot-on in his nervousness, anxiety, and energy. But he carried that into his dialog as well, and it made it very difficult to understand at times. That surprised me because on the live stage one must purposefully enunciate and project one's voice to be heard and understood clearly. But here, he talks in rapid-fire to the point that audiences miss some of his dialog. He's the only one in the film who does that. I'm surprised that the director and others in this London Film production didn't catch it and correct it early on. A couple of other reviews said Logan was a misogynist. They probably based that on a divorce case when he discredits Mrs. Johnson in a courtroom scene. But they surely missed a lot in this movie. Logan was distraught over what he thought was Leslie's past with many different men. The comedy here was how it affected him in his work. If anything, Logan was the opposite. He was putty in the hands of women. He admits it early on. When Leslie sneaks into his hotel suite, she says, "You're much too nice to turn me out." Logan replies, "Nice? Look here, you don't know me. The trouble with me is that I'm weak. A charming young girl like you could bend it over me in five minutes. But at least I know my weakness." Later, Lord Mere comes to see Logan about a divorce (before Logan mistakenly thinks Leslie to be Lady Mere). Logan says, "But do you love her?" Lord Mere says, "What?... I say, uh, yes." And Logan says, "Then why do you want a divorce?" These instances hardly point to someone who's a misogynist. This is a fine, somewhat sophisticated comedy. With better film qualities and slower dialog by Olivier, it would rate even higher. See the Quotes section of the IMDb Web page of the film for some hilarious lines. Here are some samples.Leslie, "By the way, what is your last name?" Logan, "Logan." Leslie, "Lo-gan." Logan, "No, not Lo-gan. It's not Chinese. Logan!"Leslie, "Good morning, grandpa." Lord Steele, "Is it? Where have you been?" Leslie, "Hasn't Jeffries told you?" Jeffries, "I most certainly did tell you. You know perfectly well there was a fog last night and Miss Leslie spent the night at the Royal Parks Hotel." Lord Steele, "Her father and mother are in India, and I'm responsible for her." Jeffries, "So am I." Lord Steele, "You? I'm her grandfather." Jeffries, "Seems I know her better."

mark.waltz It's a mass state of confusion for barrister Laurence Olivier when he is manipulated to share his hotel suite with the stranded Merle Oberon whom he later believes to be the wife in question when he takes on the divorce case by Ralph Richardson. Oberon, actually single and the only heir to her grandfather's estate, knows the truth but having fallen in love with him, keeps it secret while the real wife (Binnie Barnes) continues her own charade. It's a sex comedy without sex, and very funny and romantic.A year before their classic pairing as Heathcliff and Cathy in "Wuthering Heighrs", Olivier and Oberon play totally different emotions, giving a British taste of screwball comedy. They share complete chemistry as they romp around innocently in pajamas, moving bedroom furniture yo his living room. Gorgeous in Technicolor, this takes two people known more for drama and gives them something fun to play with. The innuendo is there, but it remains classy the entire time.

MartinHafer "The Divorce of Lady X" is a lovely color film produced by Alexander Korda--a man who had a great history producing films in the UK and US. However, compared to many of Korda's other great films, this one comes up a bit average. It has a great idea but something about it kept it from being a bit better.The film begins in a horrible London fog. It's so foggy that folks can't get home and a hotel is totally booked. The last person to get a room, Everard (Laurence Olivier), is dead tired and miffed when the management asks him to share his suite since there are so many looking for rooms. Despite this, a very pushy and determined woman, Leslie (Merle Oberon), is able to finagle a bed in his room--and here is complications arise. He thinks she's a married woman and the next day, a man comes to hire him (as he's a barrister--that's a lawyer to us Americans) to sue his wife for divorce--and the woman the new client describes sounds EXACTLY like the woman who just spent the night with him! What's he to do? He's initially afraid that he's about to be named a co-respondent but later it's more complicated when he thinks that he's falling in love with this woman--a woman he thinks has been married four times already!I nearly gave the movie a 7, so I did like it. However, sometimes I really thought they made Oberon's character too obnoxious and unlikable. Additionally, why Olivier's character would want to marry her is perplexing considering she's so obnoxious, manipulative AND he thinks she's been married many times already. Add to this a ridiculous courtroom scene at the very end, it just kept me wishing they'd edited or re-written the thing a bit.

Gordon Cheatham (cheathamg) At one point in the film, Olivier is cross examining a woman accused of adultery during a divorce trial. She is acting coy and Olivier goes off into a rant against all women. Below is a quote of his words."Woman has a religion of her own, the ancient creed of womanhood. There is only one article of faith, but every woman sincerely and steadfastly believes in it, and that is she is the unique and perfect achievement of the human species, being especially evolved to be above criticism, beyond reproach and outside the law. Man in his folly and kindness has been bamboozled into accepting woman as a rational being and has granted her emancipation on that assumption. What is his reward? Modern woman has disowned womanhood and refuses man's obligations. She demands freedom but won't accept responsibility. She insists upon time to develop her personality and she spends it on cogitating on which part of her body to paint next. By independence, she means idleness. By equality, she means carrying on like Catherine the Great. By companionship with man, she means that he should wait upon her hand and foot. Modern woman has no loyalty, decency or justice; no endurance, reticence or self-control; no affection, fine-feelings or mercy. In short, she is unprincipled, relentless and exacting; idle, unproductive and tedious; unimaginative, humorless and vain; vindictive, undignified and weak, and the sooner man takes out his whip again, the better for sanity and progress."