You won't be disappointed!

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

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

Olivier acts according to the requirements of his role, and the suggestion made isn't of bourgeois uprightness, but rather of naivety (because in cinema, save that you actually read the script, the character means the actor, regardless of what you guess or get about what the character should be supposed to look like), Morton Selten calls the barrister a jackass; he made me think of March and, since this is a British screwball, of how March should of made his role in a '30s screwball along the way shown here by Olivier. The Englishman was obviously more _telluric, more earthly than March, but also how deprived of the dreaded blandness is his acting! (I mean it's not only that March wasn't as handsome; his acting too left to be desired, in the '30s screwball I am thinking of.) And it doesn't take him long to outshine his costar, till she seems quite limited; with him, you get the feeling that you watch one of the greatest actors ever. Being a farce, the script doesn't offer much as characterizations.A sitcom with a variety of means (the gags in the hotel scenes) and an average script, unpretentiously efficient, with a certain heartlessness and coldness, but also nicely understated, and (if not artful) it's crafty and likable, and a very good place to become fond of the leading actor, larger than life over a modest storyline; Olivier was indeed mind-blowing. Binnie Barnes, the unfaithful manipulative adventuress, statuesquely sexy.Will the fresh husband become like the cheated Lord, or like the shrewd judge? There are no signs that the latter stopped recognizing his own youthful steps in the newfound enthusiasm of his niece's husband.If the farce seems basic, the movie is superior; I have found amusing the gags, and appealing the smoothness and ability. In this sitcom is found one of the basic premises of the screwball: a woman's determination and initial decision to marry a yet unaware man; from the beginning, she knows she'll marry him.

The British cinema did not make many colour films in the thirties and forties, and the ones they did make often seemed ill-chosen. At least the Americans tended to reserve Technicolor for their more spectacular movies. I have never, for example, really understood why David Lean chose to make that dull domestic drama "This Happy Breed" in colour, and "The Divorce of Lady X"- a very early example of British Technicolor- is another which would have worked just as well in black-and-white.Leslie Steele, a young socialite attending a charity ball at a London hotel, has to stay overnight because of a particularly bad "pea-souper" fog. As there are no rooms available, she is forced to share a suite with Everard Logan, a handsome young barrister specialising in divorce cases. Leslie is single, but a misunderstanding makes Logan believe that she is married, and she plays along with this misapprehension. Later Logan is approached by an old school friend, Lord Mere, who asks him to represent him in a divorce suit against his wife whom he suspects of adultery. Logan has never met Lady Mere, who happens to have been another guest at the same party, and a further series of misunderstandings leaves Logan convinced firstly that Lady Mere was the woman who spent the night in his suite and secondly that he himself is the man whom Lord Mere suspects of being his wife's lover. To complicate matters further, he is starting to fall in love with Leslie, even though he believes her to be another man's wife. Despite all these complications, he agrees to take on the case.This was a remake of another film, "Counsel's Opinion", made only five years earlier by the same company, London Films. (Binnie Barnes, who plays Lady Mere here, appeared as Leslie in the earlier film). I have never seen "Counsel's Opinion", but the fact that it was remade so soon afterwards, in the then very expensive medium of Technicolor, suggests that the story was a popular one in the thirties. Today, however, it is difficult to understand why. To start with, it is obvious that the scriptwriters had very little legal knowledge. This becomes clear when Logan, in the middle of cross-examining a witness, suddenly launches into a lengthy tirade against modern women, only dubiously relevant to the subject of his cross-examination, without incurring the immediate severe rebuke from the Judge which would be the reward of any barrister who tried such tactics in real life. As a barrister, Logan would not have been permitted to receive instructions direct from his client rather than via a solicitor. And, most importantly, you don't need to know much about legal etiquette to realise that the idea of a lawyer prosecuting a case in which he himself might be named as a co-respondent is quite absurd.These legal howlers might have been forgivable if the film had been made as a zany farce- there is, after all, something farcical about the idea of a lawyer ending up suing himself through a series of misunderstandings- but in a romantic comedy set in the world of the law they are simply embarrassing. They are not, however, the only reason why the story just does not work today. The best thing about the film is the lovely Merle Oberon. (Her husband, Alexander Korda, acted as producer). Laurence Olivier, however, seems strangely miscast. Now I have never been an adherent of that school of thought which holds that Olivier could not convincingly play any character born after around 1600, but light comedy was never really his forte, and he seems rather stiff as Logan. (His comedic skills did not improve with age, either. In "The Prince and the Showgirl", a film he himself directed some twenty years later, he was to prove even worse than he is here).The main problem, however, is that tastes in humour have changed since 1938. Comedies about divorce and remarriage were very popular in the American cinema around this period, and although the British tended to be more Puritanical about such matters, films like this were not unknown on this side of the Atlantic. Now some of the American comedies of divorce were very good; "The Philadelphia Story", for example, must still rank as one of the best comedies ever made. Others, however, have dated badly; one example which comes to mind is "My Favourite Wife", even though it shared a leading man (Cary Grant) with "The Philadelphia Story". An important part of their original appeal is that they were considered modern, daring and ground-breaking and a way of showing just how modern, daring and ground-breaking the 1930s and 1940s were in comparison to the boring, fuddy-duddy 1910s and 1920s. Any objections from moralists could be overcome by pointing out that many of them end with the feuding couple still together or remarried. (In "The Divorce of Lady X" Lord and Lady Mere eventually reconcile when he discovers she is innocent of any wrongdoing).More than sixty years on, however, films like this are no longer seen as daring or modern; in fact, the social attitudes they enshrine often seem very outdated. "The Divorce of Lady X" probably never had much going for it beyond the fact that it was trendy by the standards of 1938. That, unfortunately, does not in itself make it worth seeing in 2014. 4/10

Laurence Olivier and Ralph Richardson who went on to knighthood as they entered the primes of their respective career show a comic talent in this film which in America would have been done by Cary Grant or William Powell. Later on Rock Hudson, Doris Day, Tony Randall and/or Gig Young would have played some of those parts in this film. In America, Carole Lombard would have been in Merle Oberon's part at the time this was made.Olivier is one tired divorce attorney who checks into a hotel one night for a little sack time. The hotel is booked to the gills, but Merle Oberson fresh from a party at the establishment also needs a place to sleep. She guiles and charms her way into his room and heart. But Olivier inadvertently mistakes who she is and that's where the fun begins. Ralph Richardson and Binnie Barnes lend good support as a battling titled Lord and his much married wife. Morton Selten does a nice turn as Oberon's grandfather. He's best known for Fire Over England as Lord Burleigh and Thief of Bagdad as the wise old king that Sabu expropriates the flying carpet from. The beard he sported in those parts is gone here.Olivier stated many times that he didn't think too much of his film performances before Wuthering Heights. He credited Wiliam Wyler for teaching him the art of cinema as opposed to stage acting. But even second rate Olivier is better than 90% of other players.

I have become quite fond of Laurence Olivier in the past few weeks, and was thrilled when I discovered this gem. I have always found it wonderful when I run across a film where I do not have to have my finger on the remote control in case nudity rears its ugly head.The Divorce of Lady X is charming till the final scene, and must have been a true delight for viewers back in 1938. I only wish people today could accept and love true humor instead of the horrid trash talk people now call funny.The Divorce of Lady X is well worth anyone's time.