Break of Hearts (1935)

Good movie, but best of all time? Hardly . . .

Good movie but grossly overrated

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Katharine Hepburn and Charles Boyer star in "Break of Hearts," a 1935 film that, despite not being particularly good, has some relevance to today's tabloid news.Boyer is a Tiger Woods-Jesse James type - he's a conductor who marries a young fledgling composer, is caught cheating on her, and she leaves him. Then he hits the skids.Predictable '30s drama. Both Boyer and Hepburn are ridiculously young and very attractive. Boyer is quite charming and moody as the conductor. Considering their respective careers, this is really just a blip on the radar.

Maybe it's just me, but the idea of Charles Boyer playing opposite Katharine Hepburn in a romance is odd...to say the least. Now I am NOT casting any aspersions on their acting--they were both fine actors. But the combination of the two in a film like this just seems strange. Perhaps at the time it didn't--as Hepburn wasn't yet a huge star and hadn't the reputation she'd have just a few years later. But the reddish-haired lady with a refined New England accent and the suave Frenchman--what an unusual combination The film begins with Boyer playing a very famous orchestra conductor and musician. He's a bit of a womanizer, so it's surprising when he meets a young would-be composer (Hepburn) that he'd fall for her so hard that he'd ask her to marry him. They seem deliriously happy and go off on a wonderful honeymoon in Europe. Things couldn't be better for the pair until he decides on a whim to go to a party with an old lady friend. However, when Katharine seems them together, she assumes he's cheating on her and perhaps he was, so she storms off--and is ready for a divorce. Can the two get past this or is their marriage headed for an untimely end? See the film and find out what happens next.Overall, while the acting is pretty good and a nice looking production, the movie itself is very ordinary...at best. In fact, some parts are a bit embarrassing to watch--it just wasn't written all that well and seemed overdone and unreal--particularly in the second half. A sticky and clichéd soap opera and not a whole lot more. There just wasn't enough interesting material in this film to elevate it anything more than a time-passer. Too bad--with this talent, it should have been a lot better.

RKO step out on a prestige romantic drama and we step into something that we'd rather hadn't, unfortunately. As the title suggests, this is a soppy and now unintentionally humorous tale, in which Hepburn loves conductor Boyer (a disparate thespian pair if ever there was one), who loves hitting the bottle. Since this drama is post-code, she doesn't do the decent thing by joining him in a life of enlightened inebriation.Despite the adult subject matter the dialogue - Hays approved = unremittingly boring - is singularly unworthy of such exceptional leading talent, to the extent of which one gets the feeling that Hepburn was cast out of a hat and in order to meet studio quotas.In the end of course, it's Katy that commands the film a complete viewing today, as opposed to the other way round. Beyond this star pairing and the routine but elevator-tolerable scoring efforts of Max Steiner, in the middle of a particularly prolific period, the only other thing this film has going for it unfortunately is the frequent threatened slides into dramatic camp.

At first I wasn't going to bother myself to review this movie which I found very inconsequential. In fact I watched the movie with one eye while concentrating on other things. I am only reviewing it because there is only one other review for the movie. That is a shame because these are two of the most respected actors of their era. The plot as it is nothing unusual. Playboy conductor meets aspiring conductor - they come together - playboy still has wandering eye to which conductress hits the road. Someone they reconcile. Scenes are buffoonish, not dramatic enough nor comedic enough - a rightfully forgotten movie. This needs to be ten lines, why i don't know, some movies aren't worth it so