Visually splendid and full of intelligence and wit, the movie is entertaining from the start, but swells in emotional intensity as the characters themselves grow and evolve.
Actors still grouse, and businessmen still eye the bottom line they just do it in period costumes.
He's the one forced to change the most during the movie, prompted by his more sensitive partner. The pair are at a creative impasse, with Sullivan determined to compose grand music, and Gilbert stuck in his rote approach to story. Leigh makes clear the different personalities of these men. Gilbert is conservative, a man of ritualistic habit, dismissive of his bubbly wife, even though he loves her. But deep passions run through Sullivan, as evidenced in his tender love affair with an American expatriate named Fanny.