The Lady Refuses (1931)

Betty Compson is quite good in this amiable little love-triangle melodrama. She is a lady down on her luck who, in order to avoid the pursuing constabulary, alights on the home of the wealthy "Sir Gerald" (Gilbert Emery). He takes her in, has dinner with her (much to the chagrin of his butler "Dobbs" (Edgar Norton) and the pair begin to bond. He, meantime, has been having some issues with his errant son "Russell" (the handsome John Darrow) and so the pair concoct a plan by which she is to be paid £1,000 ($5,000) to help bring him back from the avaricious clutches of Margaret Livingtsone ("Berthine"). Snag is, gradually she falls for both men - and they both fall for her and... Now, the production is about as basic as you can get and is seriously stage bound. The lighting is desperately short of wattage and the British accents - well, perhaps less said about the the better. That said, Compson delivers an engaging, feisty towards the end, performance that demonstrates a strength of character and an independence of spirit well ahead of it's time (for the cinema, anyway!).