Madame Butterfly

Pinkerton marries Cho-Cho San on shore leave, sails, marries again, and comes back with his wife, and she has kept the house as he left it and had his child. Sylvia Sidney plays the part, a white actress in the role as the period did it, with a gravity the material rarely gets, and Cary Grant, in his first year, is as callow as Pinkerton requires. The Belasco play rather than the opera, though Puccini is in the score, directed by Marion Gering in the stillness of the early sound stage. Charles Ruggles is the friend who sees what is coming. Paramount, 1932.