Ernst Lubitsch's Three Women (1924)

Where Three Women occasionally come alive is in its sardonic as well as compassionate treatmemt of Mabel's anxiety over aging and Lamont's indifference to her feelings.

--Joseph McBride. How Did Lubitsch Do It?

Sleazy businessman Edmund Lamont (Lew Cody) sees Mabel Wilton (Pauline Frederick) at a ball and can't help but notice how bedecked with jewels she is, especially since he has huge debts and no money with which to pay them.  Lamont courts Mabel until Mabel's daughter Jeannie comes home suddenly from college and Lamont switches his courting to her and marries her; Lamont knows how to exploit weakness, insecurity and vanity.  Meanwhile Jeannie's college beau Fred (Pierre Genron) follows Jeannie, only to discover that she has married Lamont after Fred (now a doctor) has been called to tend to Lamont after a brawl in a nightclub -- Lamont had been out with a third woman, Harriet (Marie Prevost) when he was supposed to be at a business meeting.  Mabel is doubly angry for first being spurned and then seeing her daughter spurned; Marie shoots and kills Lamont, is acquitted by an all-male jury and Jeannie goes back to Fred. 

This overwrought drama is handled with impressive subtlety by Lubitsch; there is a minimum of titles in this silent film, as Lubitsch makes visually clear the content of the dialogue.  It has been suggested by some that the film would have been more believable if Lamont had been played by someone (Adolph Menjou has been suggested) less slimy but that would have have made for a very different movie; I find Lew Cody effectively cast as a suitor who knows how to get what he wants from women.  There is also an interesting contrast between Mabel as a mother and Fred's mother (Mary Carr):  in neither case is a father present, or even mentioned, and each mother finds different ways to encourage their child to become educated and independent.