Ex-Lady is a 1933 film directed by Robert Florey.
Helen (Bette Davis) is a graphic artist who is in a romantic relationship with Don, who runs a small advertising agency. Helen is a modern, liberated 1933 woman, so she sees nothing wrong with enjoying regular sex with Don without benefit of marriage. However, Don is falling in love with Helen and grows weary of their no-strings-attached affair. When he asks her to marry him, Helen, explaining that getting married would cause her to lose autonomy over her own life—it's 1933, she isn't wrong—says no. Don then breaks up with her. Another suitor named Nick hits on Helen, but she realizes that she really does love Don. This time she asks Don to get married, he says yes, and they do.
Helen joins Don at his advertising agency. The pressures of business, and specifically Don fighting against the considerably larger agency Nick works for, starts straining the marriage. When Helen catches Don canoodling with a society wife named Peggy, Helen tells Don that she wants things to to back to the way they were.
Tropes:
- High-Class Glass: Hugo, Don and Helen's drunken aristocrat friend and a serious art collector, puts a monocle on his eye when he wants to get serious and inspect a painting.
- Hitler Cam: On an opera singer, of all people, as she sings for all the guests at Hugo's fancy dinner party.
- Leg Focus: The sexy dancer at the nightclub where Don and Helen go is introduced with a tight closeup of her legs.
- Lingerie Scene: Bette Davis in a skimpy slip when she's in bed for the night, and another skimpy slip when she gets calls from Nick and Don in quick succession.
- Love Dodecahedron: Helen, Don, Nick who would like to get with Helen, and Peggy who tries to seduce Don.
- Open Relationship Failure: Helen says she wants an open relationship, even telling Don not to get jealous after admitting she's accepted a date with Nick. Nick agrees. But of course neither of them really mean it, as he's obviously jealous of her and Nick and she gets jealous on the same night after seeing Nick going out with Peggy. Both Nick and Peggy make sexual advances to their respective partners, but neither Helen nor Don can go through with it, and naturally they wind up back together.
- The Rival: Nick isn't just trying to win Don's girlfriend. He's also a rival in business, who works for a significantly larger advertising agency than Don's and fights with Don for the same accounts.
- Serious Business: Sex before marriage! Helen and Don feel obliged to hide their relationship from their friends, with Don pretending to leave a party at Helen's before doubling back. Don starts feeling guilty as well, saying that they should get married so he'd have "the right" to be with her, a turn of phrase that Helen doesn't like at all.
- Sexy Backless Outfit: Helen wears a slinky backless dress when she goes nightclubbing with Don.
- Stock Footage: Some stock footage of men playing jai alai, as Don and Helen are honeymooning and watch a match.
- Slut-Shaming: Helen's parents are German immigrants. Her traditionalist father flips out, calling Helen "cheap" after he catches Don in her apartment.
- TV Telephone Etiquette: Twice, Don says "oh" and hangs up without another word after finding out he's lost an account.
- Video Credits: Of all the main players at the start of the film, as was Warner Brothers' house style in this era.
