Girls Dormitory (1936)

Let's be realistic.

A waste of 90 minutes of my life

When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

A May-December romance may not be to modern tastes, but there can't be many young women who wouldn't fall for a man like Herbert Marshall if he was their headmaster. He's devastatingly attractive here in an oblivious-to-his-own-charms, mild and scholarly kind of a way, with that legendary voice.The film is what it is in terms of being a product of its era. The rhythm of the scenes is different from what we are used to today. The social mores are obviously of another era. There's no way a schoolgirl of today would face an intrusive inquisition by the entire teaching staff for something as trivial as an unsent love letter, you can hear the 21st century lawsuits flying.But this was a different era, and it's a strange delight to just step back in time and absorb it all.Simone Simon is absolutely luminous on screen. The love scene is exquisite: from Marshall's rain-wet hair falling over his forehead to Simon's declaration that shakes him to the core.It's a sad film too. You can't help but feel for Ruth Chatterton, and even half wish he'd change his mind and discover his love for her instead of Simon, who is surely young and beautiful enough to love again. Apparently there's a 1931 German film where the headmaster does end up with this colleague. But here he doesn't, and is reunited with Simon in what feels like a somewhat rushed ending.Girls' Dormitory is only 66 minutes long: there's room for a better ending. More screen time and a subplot for Tyrone Power could have been interesting. Films have become longer each decade, but the average movie in the 1930s by one analysis I found was 96 minutes - half an hour longer. I'm not film historian enough to know why Girls' Dormitory is so short, but perhaps we may feel that its brevity adds to its charm.Anyway, this is one to enjoy and not agonise too deeply over. Simone Simon's character is 19 after all, and this is from an era where a girl would expect to marry soon after finishing school.

If it were not for the fact that Tyrone Power had a small role that caused Darryl Zanuck to take notice of him, Girl's Dormitory would well be forgotten as it should. I doubt such a film would have been done in an American setting. One was tried called That Hagen Girl and it nearly wrecked the careers of Shirley Temple and Ronald Reagan.Girl's Dormitory was also to be the debut of young French player Simone Simon and she plays one sly little minx who is going to a boarding school in Germany. A couple of days before graduation she writes and then discards a steamy love letter to an unknown lover. The house matron at the school, Constance Collier finds it and shows it to another teacher J. Edward Bromberg.Who then raises a big whoop-tee-do at the faculty meeting. Bromberg wants this immoral young lady made an example of and tossed from the school. Remember this is two days before graduation. Simon confesses to another teacher Ruth Chatterton that it was meant for Herbert Marshall the headmaster. Chatterton also has it for Marshall.After that the film moves right along the path of That Hagen Girl and looks just as stupid as Marshall declares his undying love for Simon. The man was a regular Jerry Lee Lewis, who'd have thunk it, Herbert Marshall.The most interesting character is the repressed J. Edward Bromberg who acts like the grand inquisitor. In an ironic twist of fate, he would face this in real life from House Un-American Activities Committee and would be the cause of his demise.Toward the end of the film, Tyrone Power playing a young nobleman tries to chat up Simon in a café. That small scene brought a lot of fan mail in and Darryl Zanuck who had just put together the 20th Century Fox merger knew he had a new male lead star who would be to him what Clark Gable was to Louis B. Mayer at MGM.So a star was born albeit in a strange birthplace. Girl's Dormitory I'm surprised made it through the omnipresent Code although no sex scenes took place. Other than seeing Ty Power's first real noticeable part, Girl's Dormitory has nothing to recommend it.

Herbert Marshall and Ruth Chatterton star in this short film, in the early part of Tyrone Power's career. But it's Simone Simon's movie.In her first film role, she shines as a budding young woman in this college or school where they enter at 15 and graduate at 19, roughly. Miss Simon has that mystique of Garbo with the allure of Dietrich. Her innocence is not overdone and she gives a very effective and sincere performance as a dreamer in love with the schoolmaster, Herbert.Some may say it gets into melodramatics as it nears the end with the storm, the school board meeting, and the over-the-top teacher who wants a hearing over the misunderstood letter.But it provides solid entertainment for little over an hour, and I would recommend this sensitive movie for anyone who wants to discover Miss Simone Simon at her best.

Herbert Marshall does his best with a foolish character and a melodramatic script. Simone is electric on the screen but the chemistry between she and Ruth Chatterton is far more compelling than between Marshall and either one of his leading ladies. I LOVED this movie when I was young, but cannot remember why. Seeing it now just makes me feel very, very old because the mores and standards promulgated are just so outdated.