The Big Pond (1930) *

Remember that comic scene in "Monkey Business" (1931) when all Marx Brothers are pretending to be Maurice Chevalier by lip-syncing the song "You Brought A New Kind Of Love To Me" ? Well, it refers to this dated melodrama directed by Hobart Henley. And unfortunately, one has to agree with this devastating review of the film on imdb: "the edits tend to be awkward--cutting away from characters as they're still delivering lines or even from Chevalier during his first song. Character blocking also clearly wasn't planned thoroughly, with the camera doing quite a bit of panning just to try to keep most of the actors within frame and often not successfully. And all of the claustrophobic interiors and dialogue-heavy action make for a stagy look".