Hands across the Table

Another Mitchell Leisen gem. Perhaps it's because I've just seen a terrible 1935 "romantic comedy" by George Cukor, but Hands across the Table is completely delightful, very funny, and totally charming. I enjoyed every moment of this, and Carole Lombard is just perfection. I was in love with her and Fred MacMurray and Ralph Bellamy by the end of this one.

I want to say, too, that Mitchell Leisen was and remains terribly underappreciated. I am especially fond of his moral sense of things. He has an approach that I find very appealing and totally at odds with what I'm used to seeing under the PCA.

Oh one more thing: I don't really think this is a "screwball" comedy, as every description seems to say. I know Carole Lombard was known for screwball, but this is a true romantic comedy – good jokes, real feelings, smart thinking, clever script, witty repartee. It's much more about language than physical hijinks, and the kinds of mistaken identities we're used to seeing in the screwball genre don't really appear here. It's MacMurray who is the screwball comic here, not Lombard.

This was part of a series of Leisen films on the Criterion Channel, and I'm grateful to them for bringing so many of his wonderful films to my attention.