I'm watching this film now on the greatest-channel-ever TCM and I don't understand why if Fran goes to the trouble to flirt and lead these men on, does she seem surprised when they approach her even further? That really bugged me, I felt bad for Sam. She was too selfish for him.
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Good question. I think at first, when she has the flirtation with Capt. Lockhart on the ship, that she is shocked at his inference that she would be less than loyal to her husband. Then, when she meets Iselin, then Kurt, she thinks she has "grown" beyond her small town life and is actually accepted by these European snobs. Sam doesn't fit into these plans, but is always a safety net when she falters. Fran strikes me as the type that always got her way. Sam eventually sees through her shallowness and grabs for happiness without her.
Great performances by Huston & Chatterton.
Fran is afraid of growing old so she wants to see herself as beautiful and desirable in the eyes of every man she finds attractive. She doesn't realize that the men she is flirting with have a lot more in mind than just hanging around gazing at her beauty.
Dodsworth understands Fran's dilemma and he is willing to indulge her need to dress up and flirt until she succumbs to Iselin and he is about to be made a fool.
Fran never understands until it is too late that Dodsworth is giving in to her because he expects her to wake up and realize that he is superior to her one-dimensional boyfriends. She can't change because she is so self-involved that she only sees Dodsworth as a sort of over-indulgent father figure not as a husband or a lover.
Once he has had a taste of love from a real woman like Mary Astor, he can see Fran clearly.
She tries to find excitement and romance in being worldly, sophisticated. But as David Niven tells her, she is really very naive at first. She has a silly flirtation at first, then more of an affair--or probably a relationship with a gigolo--until lastly, when she is so panicked by being a grandmother, she is ready to divorce Sam and marry a younger man--until that fell apart.
shareA) I find it odd that an adult woman can't figure it out.
B) I find it odd that the OP never bothered to return here, for an answer. If she did, she didn't even have the courtesy to thank the several people who had the patience and took the time to answer her rather silly question.
C) Read Sinclair Lewis' brilliant novel, silly woman. (Though in many ways, the film is superior to Lewis' magnificent source material.)