The Painted Veil

Watts steps into the pin-heeled shoes of Greta Garbo, who first played the impish Kitty Fane in 1934. She’s certainly a lot less glamorous than Garbo, but adds a modern ‘Material Girl’ grit to Kitty’s snub-nosed boredom with London life. She marries uptight Walter (Norton) to escape her twittering parents and doesn’t think twice about playing away in Shanghai with fellow ex-pat Charlie (Liev Schreiber). Her reckless streak does nothing to engender Kitty initially, but when Walter spitefully drops her in the middle of a humanitarian crisis, the mood changes. –BBC Film Archive