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.

Kitty (1945)

Kitty is a riff on the Pygmalion story, but it's so brilliantly done, with such a cracklingly witty script, that I fell for it and fell hard. Paulette Goddard is fabulous in this, and Ray Milland is, of course, delightful. The supporting cast is excellent too, especially Constance Collier and Cecil Kellaway. There are some absolutely hilarious moments in this script, and the gowns and the hair and makeup are superb. Kitty was nominated for production design, but this was two years before the costume design category was created. This is a sumptuously made movie and it's gorgeously designed - Mitchell Leisen was, in fact, a designer before he was a director. But the direction is also brilliant. Leisen has this relaxed, casual way in his films that seems to defy the morality of the day with a beautiful ease. Kitty is really a spectacular - and spectacularly underrated – film, but I'm certainly glad we are all beginning to reassess Leisen's wonderful career.

I watched this as part of a series of Leisen films on the Criterion Channel. I've only seen a few, but I'm a new admirer.

Arise, My Love (1940)

You probably know that I am kind of obsessed with contemporary WWII movies, the ones made in the 1940s during the war, I mean. Well, Mitchell Leisen's Arise, My Love is one of the best I've seen. The script is superb, and this is a hilarious movie as well as being a good romance and a good propaganda vehicle. Oh, and it's also exciting and action-filled, with two daring escapes. This whole thing is aces. Ray Milland and Claudette Colbert are fantastic. And Walter Abel is hilarious.

Mitchell Leisen is having a bit of a renaissance at the moment, and perhaps a critical reassessment of his work. There is a series of his films on the Criterion Channel right now... but Arise, My Love is not one of them. Now, I do not know why this is, but this movie has got to be one of his best. It's great. 

You can watch Arise, My Love in some random spots on the internet just by googling it. 

The title, incidentally, comes up several times in the film, and it's from the English Standard Version of Song of Solomon 2.10-13:

Arise, my love, my beautiful one, and come away, for behold, the winter is past; the rain is over and gone. The flowers appear on the earth, the time of singing has come, and the voice of the turtledove is heard in our land. The fig tree ripens its figs, and the vines are in blossom; they give forth fragrance. Arise, my love, my beautiful one, and come away.

To Each His Own (1946)

No thanks. 

Olivia DeHavilland moons her way through the typical Oscar bait narrative in which a woman sacrifices her son (it's always a son, isn't it?) for the good of another woman and for the good of the child himself. This is so tiresome.

I must say I was a bit surprised that DeHavilland's goody-two-shoes reputation allowed her to play a woman who had a child without being married, but of course she doesn't even kiss the man onscreen so I guess she got away with it that way. What an eye-roll this whole business is. I can't believe I sat through it.

Funnily enough, I had actually been looking forward to this movie a lot. It's one of the few Best Actress winners I hadn't seen (La Ciociara and Anastasia are now the only two), and so when the film became available on the Cave of Forgotten Films website I jumped at the chance to see it. Alas, this film ought perhaps to have stayed forgotten.

Lady in the Dark (1944)

Lady in the Dark is a strange movie. In the first place, it is outrageously sexist – perhaps even by the standards of 1944 – and in the second, it transmutes the stage musical into something that isn't really a musical at all but has these sort of fantasy numbers, a bit like Chicago would do 58 years later. But the filmmakers also cut "My Ship", which is frankly unforgivable. Mischa Auer is hilariously genius (as usual) in a supporting part.