The Key 1934
Directed by Michael Curtiz. Starring William Powell, Edna Best, Colin Clive, and Hobart Cavanaugh.
In 1920 Dublin, during the Irish War of Independence, Colin Clive plays a British Army Intelligence Officer whose outwardly happy marriage is crumbling. Edna Best plays his wife, who still carries a torch for a man she had a brief affair with in England before marrying Clive a few years earlier. These unresolved feelings stand poised to drive the couple apart.
Enter William Powell as a Canadian expat serving in the British Army. He arrives in Dublin with a history of womanizing scandals smoothed over by battlefield heroics. His assigned apartment sits one floor below Clive and Best’s. Clive recognizes Powell and invites him upstairs, where he meets Best. Clive proves oblivious to the tension between the two and when he leaves, we learn Powell is the man Best has yearned for all these years. To Powell’s surprise, he realizes he still loves her too. Continue reading...