For its time, this was a difficult topic to address in film, and though it was a touchy subject, I am sure many will disagree with my review of the film as an entire piece of work instead of focusing only on the subject matter. If you wish to know what a filmmaker thinks about the film as a whole as opposed to the significance of the subject, then please read on.<br /><br />What was Universal thinking when they wasted their time and budget on this waste of film? Struggling from money problems from flops and upcoming big budget films, they should have reconsidered this one. It was obvious the studio had other things on its mind and possibly only wanted to cash in on Colbert's name and stardom. Be advised. Watch it only if you don't care at all about quality film-making.<br /><br />ACTING: Poor Claudette Colbert, nominated for Oscars in 3 Best Picture selections in one year, was the only person who could act in the entire film and had to overact to pull the film along for all the other under-actors. Ned, portraying Elmer with a gruff stodgy almost constipated voice, was supposed to be comedic and for the first 3 lines it was a cute gimmick, but he continued on with monotone recitation without any screen presence or semblance of acting. If he was a minor character, it wouldn't have been as grating but he had a great many painful scenes to endure. Louise as Delilah, though she had a difficult and groundbreaking role to play in Hollywood history, when compared to one that may be as difficult if not more so as Hattie McDaniel in GWTW, she pales shamefully in comparison and her abilities as an actor (if any) simply don't come across. Though Juanita as Baby Jessie has a few cute moments at the start of the film, I won't go further into the child actors save one grievance: unprepared wooden pathetic attempts to act and having to look off camera for their lines and those looks retained in the final cut out says enough. The children as adults, Rochelle as Jessie and Fredi as Peola, were melodramatic at best, with Fredi's "talents" being geared more for silent films and Rochelle's simply tolerable. Warren, as Steve, tried, he did try, I will give him that, but he was unappealing and bland at best.<br /><br />SCRIPT: Scenes are entirely too long with moments that drag on and on and on and on. This is one of the wordiest films I have ever seen. Not only do they drag the viewer through the initial festering dialog, they feel the need to recap nearly every "plot point" several times immediately after. The dialog was unnatural. The lines were difficult at best and almost unplayable as the actors (I'll give them credit for now) demonstrated with efficiency. Slow, useless, unnecessary and unnatural dialog only serves to slow the film down and make it seem to drag.<br /><br />EDITING: Did they use every single frame of film shot in this movie? Was it edited or simply pieced together? This film would be a whole lot better if 20 minutes of useless and poorly acted footage was removed. I am not an ADD viewer, as I love a scene that plays out for 4+ minutes with minimal cutting, but this film seriously needs editing. Edit out the kids looking off-screen for their lines. Edit out the unnecessary walking. Edit out the unnecessary conversation irrelevant to the film.<br /><br />CINEMATOGRAPHY: Boring, unexciting, visual death. It is the job of the DP/Cinematographer to make the scenes visually interesting while capturing what the Director wants from the actors. Framing could have been considerably better. Lighting was par for a B/W film, but nothing beyond ordinary.<br /><br />DIRECTION: With the bulk of his director's credits being B movies and shorts about chimpanzees in "chimp comedies" (monkeys chewing gum w/ actors' voices dubbed over), I can see why the human actors probably didn't get much direction. Poor acting is often as much the fault of the director as the actor, because it is the skilled director's job to "pull" the performance from the actor no matter what it takes.<br /><br />Oscar NOMINATION: The only reasons I can think of for this movie being nominated for Best Picture in 1935, (before there was a limit placed on number of nominations) are (1) the groundbreaking nature of the subject matter vs the times, (2) this was a vehicle for the popular Claudette and (3) that it was based on a highly regarded book at the time. It didn't win anything, which indeed speaks for itself.