Strange Interlude

Norma Shearer and Clark Gable, who provided potent screen chemistry in 1931's A Free Soul, smolder again in the 1932 film version of Eugene O'Neill's Pulitzer Prize-winning play, a compelling and complex drama of jealousy, grief, madness, lust and love. Shearer plays a woman haunted by the death of her sweetheart and by her father's unnatural obsession. She marries a man she doesn't love -- and has a child through an adulterous liaison with a handsome doctor (Gable), a secret they keep throughout their lives. The play's famed soliloquies, in which the characters express their thoughts to the audience, made a transition to celluloid as voiceovers, lending a bold, experimental quality to the production.