The Little Foxes (1941)

4 stars

Regina's husband is obviously portrayed as the righteous do-gooder in a nest of vipers, but he exerted patriarchal control over money that rightfully belonged to Regina as much as him, and used it to punish and control her, and leave her in the exact position she married him to get out of, out of pure spite.

The tailors son was also a self-righteous prat, acting like he was going to be the one to expose corruption in the small town when he had no way to publish it, and visiting prostitutes on the side as if there's no moral quandary about that behavior in 1900.

And that drunk Birdie, waxing poetic about how well her family treated their SLAVES and how they were so much better than the Hubbard's, who were just run of the mill capitalists in comparison.

And finally that little twit of a daughter, running off with a tailors son when her mother is about to bring her to Chicago at the turn of the century, one of the greatest opportunities anyone could get in 1900. That was the place to be, and she's turned it down for a guy that is absolutely going to sleep around on her, without question.

Regina was a genius, and in modern times she would have been appreciated for getting over on her idiot brothers and turning herself into a millionaire. She was right, she won, and all she lost was the respect of her teenage daughter, who will without a doubt come crawling back in ten years with kids in tow, crying about her cheating husband and begging her brilliant mother to save her. A hail Regina.