Film Review: I Was a Male War Bride (1949)

Ann Sheridan must dress her husband (Cary Grant) as
a woman in order to get him to America.

Haven't you always wanted to see the handsomest man in the world dress in drag? You haven't? Well, too bad! Because if you watch this movie, you're going to see it anyway. Famed director Howard Hawks takes on this post-war comedy based on a true story and staring Cary Grant and Ann Sheridan. The title pretty much tells the plot of the film: I Was a Male War Bride

French Captain Henri Rochard (Cary Grant) and U.S. Lieutenant Catherine Gates (Ann Sheridan) have worked on a number of missions together recovering art treasures stolen by the Nazis from the Louvre and undermining underground efforts. Ironically, though, they cannot stand each other, but in the usual manner of romantic comedies, they end up falling in love after some madcap capers. Unfortunately, for members of the U.S. Army the course of true love doesn't often run smooth when they want to marry foreigners. For the next hour we are treated to a biting portrait of military bureaucracy at its finest, first with trying to arrange a wedding, and then when Catherine's unit is ordered back to America, with trying to get Henri a visa. The only they can get him into the country is through a loophole in the War Bride Act, which says it applies to "alien spouses" but doesn't specify gender.

Of course the bureaucracy can't seem to wrap their minds around the fact that the alien spouse in question is a man, and it holds them up at every step of the process. Finally the sailors on the boat to America refuse to believe the story, so Henri must dress up as a woman to get on board--with hilarious results.

Cary Grant really carries this film more than anything else. His character has a snarky sense of humor and a temper that can't put up with all the absurdities to which he is subjected. Enough has been said about Grant's considerable comedic talents. I'll only add that he never fails to disappoint, and that his extreme good looks only augment the humor of the awkward situations in which he finds himself.

I give this movie a 7.5, a thoroughly enjoyable comedy.

Buy it now:
I Was a Male War Bride

Film Review: Dial M for Murder

A midnight phone call to Grace Kelly is the signal for murder
in this classic Hitchcock thriller.

Hitchcock in 3D! It sounds like a cheap gimmick in order to draw the crowds, and it was. But even top-name directors like Hitch were having problems getting people to go to the movies when they could stay home and watch their new-fangled television sets and get quality entertainment (Hitch himself would later give in to the phenomenon and launch the memorable Alfred Hitchcock Presents.). It's a well-documented part of film history that Hollywood almost went bankrupt in the '50s with the advent of television, and in order to compensate, they had to start offering something in their films that people couldn't see on television. Color film was one of the first changes, but when the 3D craze hit, it gave the movie industry an unexpected boost, and suddenly studios were clamoring to make as many 3D movies as possible. Most of them have no redeeming value, having been filmed only for their visual effects, but there were some good movies made during that period in 3D, ones which are intrinsically good regardless of how many dimensions in which they're seen.

Hitchcock based most of his work off plays, novels, or short stories, and this gem from 1955 is no exception.
Almost all the action in Dial M for Murder takes place in a single set, the apartment of a supposedly happily married couple in Mayfair, London. It's soon revealed, however, that not so long ago the wife (Grace Kelly) was seriously contemplating leaving her husband (Ray Milland) because she was in love with someone else (Robert Cummings). When we meet her husband, we suddenly understand why she would want to leave him, especially when it comes out that he is plotting to murder her for her money. He thinks up the perfect scheme for murder, but you know what the poet Burns said about the "best laid plans of mice and men"...

The man he hires to do the dirty work ends up getting killed himself in the scuffle with the wife. Seemingly never at a loss, the husband then tries to frame her for the hit-man's murder--and does an excellent job. She's a day before the scheduled execution when the detective starts to have second thoughts.

Although the acting is excellent, this movie is really carried by the plot. Ray Milland's character devises such an airtight plot to kill his wife that it holds the audience spellbound as they watch it unfold. Then they naturally watch to see if she can avoid the unjust execution. The Master of Suspense is at the top of his game in this oft-overlooked film.


I rate this movie an 8 out of 10. A solid Hitchcock hit.

Buy it now:
Dial M for Murder

Film Review: Laura (1944)

Detective Dana Andrews cannot take his eyes off a murdered
woman's portrait in the film noir classic Laura.

If there was one genre that peaked during the '40s it would be film noir, mostly because of Humphrey Bogart's breakthrough presence. All Bogy's great film noir titles came in those ten years, iconic movies like The Maltese Falcon, The Big Sleep, Key Largo, and To Have and Have Not. Despite Bogie's dominance, however, there were plenty of other memorable film noir made in the '40s, my favorite of which is Laura.


When successful advertiser Laura Hunt (Gene Tierney) is shot dead in her apartment just a few days before her intended wedding, at first Detective Mark McPherson (Dana Andrews) is at a loss to understand why anyone would want to see her killed. The more he investigates, however, the clearer it becomes to him that almost everyone she knew might have a motive for murder.

In the first half of the movie we meet all the suspects and get and eloquent synopsis of her life out of the mouth of her friend Waldo Lydecker (Clifton Webb). McPherson himself becomes so taken with everything he hears about Laura's character as well as the hauntingly lovely portrait of her that hangs on the wall that he begins to fall in love with the dead woman himself. Just as the threads of the story have worked themselves into an impossible knot, we are treated to a memorable plot twist: Laura herself walks through the door, blissfully unaware that she was presumed murdered. But who was killed that night in her apartment, then? And why was she found in Laura's apartment wearing Laura's clothes? (Is that a good lead-in or what?)


Although Gene Tierney and Dana Andrews put on great performances as the lead characters, Clifton Webb undoubtedly steals the show as Laura's journalist friend who remains obsessed with her even after she appears dead. Webb's performance is deliciously venomous and at times heartbreakingly passionate, making the audience vacillate between loathing, admiration and pity throughout the picture. Interestingly enough, a young Vincent Price plays Laura's ne'er-do-'ell fiancée Shelby, and Judith Anderson (famed for her incredibly creepy performance as Mrs. Danvers in Rebecca) portray's Laura's aunt who is in love with Shelby.

This movie survives remarkably well to the present day. Except perhaps for the final scene, which may strike modern sensibilities as overly dramatic, the entire production seems tastefully done and not terribly dated in the acting and filming style, which is extremely rare to find.

Laura rates a solid 9 of 10 in my book, easily the best non-Bogart film noir ever made

Buy on DVD:
Laura (Fox Film Noir), The Maltese Falcon (Three-Disc Special Edition), The Big Sleep,To Have and Have Not (Keepcase), Key Largo (Keepcase)

Film Review: The Band Wagon (1953)

Fred Astaire and Cyd Charisse, Dancing in the Dark from
The Band Wagon, their first of two films together.

MGM had a successful string of musical films in the '50s with a slightly different formula than what they used in the past. Most movie musicals until that point were either screen adaptations of stages shows or original ideas with new tunes written just for them (see most of the Astaire and Rogers musicals). Occasionally you would get a tribute movie where the best works of a certain composer would be worked into the plot of a musical, often fictional biopics about the composer, but these were few and far between.

Beginning in 1950, however, MGM started a string of tribute musicals to great critical and popular acclaim. The first of these was Three Little Words with Fred Astaire and Red Skelton. It was a fun little biopic about composers Burt Kelmar and Harry Ruby, a fun little movie, and financially successful, but not terribly memorable. The next year someone at MGM had the bright idea to do a musical tribute to Gershwin, and thus An American in Paris was born, and would go on to win the Oscar for Best Picture in 1951, mostly for the brilliance of the ballet sequence and the fact that everybody loves Gershwin because apart from those two things, I don't think it was a very good picture. Spurred by the unprecedented success, the next year MGM did a musical tribute to Arthur Freed and Nacio Herb Brown set in the Roaring '20s. That film, of course, was the greatest movie musical of all time, Singin' in the Rain.

So this begs the question: once you make Singin' in the Rain, what can you do for an encore? The answer is 1953's The Band Wagon. While not as iconic as its predecessor, The Band Wagon is still a top-notch musical with a stellar cast, a wonderful score, and a clever plot. In fact, to use a baseball metaphor, if those four movies were MGM hitting for the cycle, Three Little Words would be the single, An American in Paris would be the double, Singin' in the Rain would obviously be the home run, and The Band Wagon would be a solid triple, one of those balls that bounces off the outfield wall and rolls into a corner so that it takes the fielder forever to chase it down, and if the 3rd base coach had just waved his hand at the right time, it could have been an in-the-park home run.

The unspoken theme of this movie is art imitating life. Fred Astaire plays a fictional version of himself, a middle-aged Hollywood dancer whose best years are behind him, Cyd Charisse plays a ballerina who is too tall for her dance partner, just as Cyd was too tall for Fred in real life, Jack Buchanan plays a thinly veiled parody of Jose Ferrer, and Nanette Fabray and Oscar Levant are knock-offs of the writing team of Betty Comden and Adolf Green, who did the screenplay for this movie as well as Singin' in the Rain.

The story starts off as a typical let's-do-a-Broadway-show plot, but things go horribly and hilariously wrong when the pretentious director (Jack Buchanan) decides to turn their unassuming little musical comedy into a modern version of Faust. In the end they conclude that it's better to do something simple and do it well than to fail at trying to be deep, which is something films in the '50s seemed to forget.

Some of the great musical numbers in this show include "That's Entertainment", "Shine on Your Shoes", "Dancing in the Dark", "I Guess I'll Have to Change My Plan", and "By Myself". They also throw in a musical sequence called "Girl Hunt," with a voice-over by Fred Astaire who narrates a parody of a film-noir detective story while he and Cyd Charisse dance it out. That scene along with the beautiful and quietly sensual "Dancing in the Dark" number are my favorite examples of Fred Astaire and Cyd Charisse dancing together. Fred's "Shine on Your Shoes" number is also extremely fun and memorable, as his horrible luck makes a complete 180 just by stopping to have his shoes shined.

I give this movie an 8.7 out of 10, easily the 2nd best musical of the decade behind Singin' in the Rain.

Buy on DVD:
The Band Wagon (Two-Disc Special Edition), Three Little Words, Singin' in the Rain (Two-Disc Special Edition), An American in Paris (Two-Disc Special Edition)

Film Review: Charade (1963)

Even strolling by the Seine with Cary Grant,
Audrey Hepburn cannot shake her fears of murder in Charade

The first time I saw this film, I was shocked to learn that it wasn't a Hitchcock; that's how good it is. Of course it was an easy mistake to make. When watching a slick, witty suspense film starring Cary Grant, of course one would think Hitchcock since Hitch used Grant in four of his masterful films: Suspicion (1941), Notorious (1946),  To Catch a Thief (1955), and North by Northwest (1959). This 1963 gem, however, was directed by long-time MGM musical and comedy director Stanley Donen, who made such classic films as Royal Wedding (1950), Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954), and Singin' in the Rain (1952), which he co-directed with Gene Kelly. So although Donen was highly credentialed, taking on a project like Charade which is charged with action and suspense was highly unusual and risky to say the least. The result, however, was a thoroughly entertaining film.

Without giving away too much of the plot, since half the fun of this movie is the curve balls it throws you, the action starts when American ex-patriot Regina Lampert (Audrey Hepburn) returns home to her Paris flat to find that her husband has been murdered while attempting to flee the country with $250,000. Regina is at a loss to explain her husband's actions until a visit to the American embassy informs her that her husband was actually a former CIA agent who absconded with that money during the war. Now her husband's co-conspirators are threatening her life unless she can somehow figure out where her husband hid the cash, and the CIA wants it back too. Helping her along the way is a dashing fellow American (Cary Grant) whom she met in the Swiss Alps, but his evasive answers and outright lies make Regina reluctant to trust him despite her obvious attraction to him.Walter Matthau and James Coburn co-star as a CIA chief and one of the conspirators out for blood or money, respectively.

What keeps this movie from being too much as the bodies pile up, each murder more gruesome than the last, is the wonderful comedic talents of Cary Grant. A combination of witty dialog and Grant's stellar physical comedy abilities break up the tension and give both the audience and Audrey Hepburn's character new reasons to fall in love with the most attractive actor ever to grace the silver screen (Grant was 59 when he made this film, but still surprisingly handsome.) My favorite part has to be when he decides to take a shower with his clothes on.

This is also my favorite screen role for Audrey Hepburn, and certainly one of her most versatile. The way she alternately chases Cary Grant shamelessly and then repulses him always makes me laugh, and she runs the gamut of emotions perfectly from despondent to frightened to childishly glib. I honestly was never a Hepburn fan until I saw this film because I objected to her anorexic physique on the grounds that I've felt the repercussions of the media's obsession for thinness in women all too personally. I liked a lot of her other films, but I never thought her performance exceptional or memorable until this one (I don't count My Fair Lady because as good as she was in that film, I can't get over the fact that she didn't do her own singing, especially when Julie Andrews originated the role in the West End and Broadway. Epic fail, Hollywood. Epic fail.).

Despite my outright adoration for this film there are two things in it that I don't like. First I can't stand the scene at the nightclub in which participants must pass an orange to each other without the use of their hands. It was another scene designed to utilize Cary Grant's physical comedy skills, but it's awkward to watch and just too drawn-out. It eats up a good five minutes of an already long movie without adding anything to the plot. The second problem I have with it is that the deaths are too gory. Hitchcock understood that with suspense films less can be more, that not showing a murder can imprint it all the more deeply into an audience's consciousness, but Stanley Donen obviously didn't get this concept, showing us a graphic drowning victim, a slit throat victim, and a person who had been smothered. I'll admit to being a little bit of a wimp when it comes to violence, but it's especially jarring in such an old movie.

One last thing to note: Audrey Hepburn's last line of the film is one of my favorites ever.

I give this movie an 8.5 out of 10, one that can be watched almost ad infinum with pleasure.

Buy on DVD:

 Charade, Suspicion, Notorious, To Catch a Thief, North by Northwest, Royal Wedding, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, Singin' in the Rain

Film Review: To Be or Not to Be (1942)

Carole Lombard and Jack Benny play Polish actors
who hoodwink the Nazis in To Be or Not to Be

For the most part, the Second World War was one of the worst things that ever happened to the movie industry, but in a few cases such as this, the interminable battle actually produced fodder for some good films. This hilariously comedy stars Jack Benny and Carole Lombard as Polish actors fighting to save the resistance movement in Europe. Director Ernst Lubitsch, who also made such hits as Ninotchka and The Shop Around the Corner, was at the height of his powers portraying central Europe with a lovingly human hand and at the same time making the social commentary uproariously funny.

The gem of a plot goes something like this: Before the war Warsaw's premier acting company was lead by husband-and-wife team Maria (Carole Lombard) and Joseph Tura (Jack Benny)--the former being more talented than the latter, despite what his  tremendous ego leads the latter to believe. Just prior to the Nazi invasion, Maria becomes friends with a young pilot in the Polish Air Force. Afraid of her husband's jealousy, she tells the pilot to meet her backstage while Joseph is performing Hamlet's "To Be or Not to Be" soliloquy, much to the chagrin of Joseph, who cannot understand why someone would walk out on him while doing that famous speech.

When Poland gets overrun the young pilot escapes to Britain and joins the RAF in order to continue the fight against the Nazis.While in London he encounters a Nazi double agent who has information that could bring down the resistance movement for all of Poland. Eager to see the plan thwarted, the young pilot must then get to Warsaw, warn the underground, and intercept the incriminating papers before it's too late.

Back in Warsaw, the pilot immediately seeks help from Maria, and she and the rest of the actors must utilize all their wiles to outsmart Germany's finest. With only her feminine charms, a hammy husband, a few Nazi costumes, a Jewish Hitler look-alike, and bit actor who dreams of doing Shylock's speech, can the9/1y really pull it off? Of course! But watching them do it is 9/10ths of the fun. The last 10 minutes of the film especially are pure comedic gold, guaranteed to bring on an asthma attack from laughing.

This film is truly Carole Lombard's swansong. She would die just a few months after this movie in a tragic plane crash while on a a USO tour, but leave us with one of her best performances ever. As Maria Tura, Lombard gives a performance where her character may be too smart for her own good, micromanaging her husband and half a Nazi regiment before she gets in over her head. Though a good comedian, Jack Benny wasn't much of an actor, and in some scenes his understated self-deprecating style seems to be rubbing too hard against a fourth wall that was meant to be invisible in this movie. Other than that, however, the rest of the performances are very enjoyable.

I give this movie an 8.5 out of 10, a delightful and sometimes suspenseful romp about ordinary people banding together to outsmart the Nazis.

 To Be or Not to BeTo Be or Not to Be (buy it on DVD)

Film Review: My Man Godfrey (1936)

Ditsy socialite Carole Lombard falls in love with her butler,
William Powell,who tries to maintain a professional distance

When composing my top 10 movies from 1930-1938, I was extremely reluctant to exclude this gem of a comedy starring William Powell and Carole Lombard. If I had to include only one William Powell comedy from the '30s, I would probably have to choose The Thin Man, but My Man Godfrey would certainly run it a close second. Based on the novel 1101 Park Avenue, the film takes its title from a parody of P.G. Wodehouse's first Jeeves and Wooster book, My Man Jeeves. Even though that famous character was a valet not a butler, to ignorant Americans he was still considered the model butler figure, and thus the title perfectly indicated the theme of the movie.

The story centers on Godfrey Park, a stockbroker who lost all his money in the crash by trying to ensure his clients didn't. Flash forward several years, and Godfrey is a jaded derelict living in a shanty town on the East River. When socialite Cornelia Bullock appears offering to pay Godfrey to be a "forgotten man" for a scavenger hunt, Godfrey tells her off and pushes her into an ash pile. Cornelia's younger sister Irene witnesses the scene, and immediately develops an admiration for Godfrey because he gave her spoiled sister what she deserved. Despite being slightly dim-witted, Irene has a good heart, and Godfrey decides to help her humiliate Cornelia once again by becoming Irene's forgotten man to help her win the scavenger hunt. Unfortunately the scavenger hunt committee humiliate Godfrey before they give Irene the prize, and Irene feels so horrible about the situation that she offers Godfrey a job as her family's butler.

When Godfrey shows up the next morning to take the job, he quickly learns why butlers in the Bullock house don't usually last more than a day. Between Cornelia's shrill demands and the insanity of Mrs. Bullock, her protegee Carlo, and Irene, Godfrey has quite the balancing act to maintain. Not only that, but Cornelia has it out for Godfrey after her double humiliation at his hands, and Godfrey must steer clear of her while fending off unwanted romantic attentions from Irene. This all makes for some spectacular comedic situations, including a particularly difficult afternoon which induces Godfrey to get drunk even though he still has his duties to perform.

Perhaps what elevates this film beyond most screwball comedies of its era, however, is the conscience displayed by Godfrey and the spirit to carry on which so defined the '30s. Even though he's been handed a rough lot, Godfrey is eager to find a way to make it through, even if it means becoming a servant to the class to which he once belonged. Godfrey turns out to be the guardian angel both for the Bullocks and his jobless friends living in the slums. He executes plans that save the Bullocks from the brink of financial ruin and provide jobs for some of the countless good men left unemployed by the rocky economy. When he finally leaves the Bullocks' service in the end, we tear up just as they do for the loss of an exceptional man, even though Godfrey is moving on to bigger and better things.

Although all the actors in this film play their parts perfectly, it's William Powell and Carole Lombard that steal the show. One of the most talented actors of his day, Powell effortlessly portrays the complex character of Godfrey park, sometimes cynical, sometimes idealistic, mostly kind but with small tolerance for spoiled brats and prolonged stupidity. Carole Lombard is a mesmerizing dumb blonde, spewing out non-sequitur after non-sequitur at 120mph until our brains become milkshakes. 

I rate this movie a solid 9 out of 10, one of the best comedies ever made.

My Man Godfrey - Criterion Collection (buy it on DVD)