Why Change Your Wife?: Cecil B. DeMille

Some silent films are able to captivate and awe audiences after nearly a century of life.  Cecil B. DeMille's Why Change Your Wife? is not one of these films.  This tired tale of marital strife is neither engaging nor entertaining to watch.  I can sum up the entire plot in one sentence: a married couple becomes complacent, breaks up, marries other people, regrets it, and gets back together.  A good film can take such a plot and make it engrossing and entertaining.  But this film drags, sputters, and stalls at every given opportunity.  It is full of the most bothersome padding as the characters meander between sets and marriages.  It doesn't help that the action comes to a complete stop periodically for ridiculously verbose title cards.  These cards, which sometimes contain a full paragraph of text, add nothing to the story and narration, but mainly serve to provide "witticisms" on the action.  It doesn't help that the story is incredibly misogynistic by today's standards.  According to DeMille, it is the woman's responsibility to keep their marriage fresh by being "exciting" and to remember that men want to marry "sweethearts" and not nagging "wives."  Still, the film is a time capsule of early 20th century fashion which may be of some value to cultural anthropologists.  But the regular film-goer will find it contrived and ultimately pointless.  DeMille made other, greater silent films from this era.  I would encourage my readers to seek them out and let this one slip away.

4/10