Forbidden review

An early (1932), uncharacteristic offering from Frank Capra: a women’s weepie starring Barbara Stanwyck as a mousy provincial librarian who kicks over the traces and takes a cruise to Havana.

On board she meets suave (and inevitably married) politico Adolphe Menjou, with whom she starts an affair that cues up all sorts of emotional anguish.

The action covers some 20 years, but fashions and styling remain stubbornly early ’30s throughout, and well before the end the whole thing collapses into rip-roaring melodrama.

But as ever, Babs transcends her material.