The elegance and wit of Noel Coward's fast-talking stage play are retained in this screen adaptation directed by Sidney Franklin. Norma Shearer and Robert Montgomery do justice to the parts played on stage by Gertrude Lawrence and Coward. Shearer's aggressively sexy performance meets the challenge of the delightfully adult, pre-Hays Code comedy about two ex-marrieds who find themselves in the same honeymoon chalet, each with a new mate. William K. Everson writes, “Private Lives is remarkably undated for a film that was made in 1931 and made no bones about being based on a very talkative stage play.... (It) still sparkles, in its staging, in its acting, and most of all, of course, in its dialogue; if it dates at all, it is only in the sense that nobody bothers today to lavish such literary style on basically unworthy characters. We still have the characters--witness Carnal Knowledge--but not the wit or the charm to make them worth our time.”