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Romantic melodrama

Easy Virtue

Year
1928
Length
70 minBFI 70-minute presentation Version sources ↓

A divorced woman tries to begin again abroad, but marriage draws her back into a society determined to turn her past into a permanent verdict.

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Language
English
RomanticTense Great first watch · Easy Romantic melodrama
A woman's eyes peer over a newspaper filled with further eyes and the title on a pink strip.

Image: Monocurator · source · Original Monocurator artwork

What to expect

Hitchcock converts Noël Coward’s stage melodrama into an early study of presumed guilt, social surveillance, and the visual transmission of scandal. Its sharpest passages already show his interest in making information itself suspenseful.

How to ease in

Larita is not hiding a crime; she is trying to escape a public identity imposed by gossip and judgement. Watch how telephones, photographs, glances, and doorways carry that identity into each new room.

Heads-up

A quick, non-exhaustive note Includes divorce, allegations of adultery, attempted suicide, death, social humiliation, class prejudice, and period sexual double standards.
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Larita changes countries, clothes, and company, yet other people keep editing her life back to one accusation. I notice how often the film makes looking feel like a form of prosecution.

— Momo

Momo thinking about this film

Credits & versions

Version map

BFI 70-minute presentation 70 min 70 minutes is attached only to the named BFI 70-minute presentation. No unsupported cut, score, territory, frame rate, source element, or restoration detail is inferred. Source: British Film Institute — Easy Virtue Runtime reference · Checked 2026-08-22

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