Wed 4 Aug 2010
Movie Review: THEODORA GOES WILD (1936).
Posted by Steve under Films: Comedy/Musicals , Reviews[25] Comments
THEODORA GOES WILD. Columbia Pictures, 1936. Irene Dunne, Melvyn Douglas, Thomas Mitchell, Thurston Hall, Elisabeth Risdon, Margaret McWade, Spring Byington. Director: Richard Boleslawski.
Humor is a funny thing. This is the lead-off movie in a boxed set of Screwball Comedies (Volume Two), and not only did I never laugh, but there are elements in this film that I actively disliked, which seldom happens. (I do screen the movies I choose to watch ahead of time.)
Well, OK, maybe I did smile once or twice.
The theme here is small-town holier-than-thou gossips and self-selected morality leaders – the small town being Lynnfield, somewhere in New England, where the local literary society is up in arms with the publisher of the local newspaper (Thomas Mitchell), who’s started to serialize the latest racy romance novel that’s sweeping the country.
Little do the members of the local literary society know that the author, Caroline Adams, is one of their own: Theodora Lynn, who lives with her two aunts in Lynnfield (and yes, the town is named after their family), and who teaches Sunday school classes and plays the organ at church.
In constant fear of her secret identity being revealed, Theodora (who of course is played by Irene Dunne) goes to New York to meet her publisher (Thurston Hall) to make him keep his promise to stay absolutely mum.
The comedy potential is there, all right, as I’m sure you can see, but the man she meets, the artist who designed the risqué cover of her book, Michael Grant (Melvyn Douglas), is such an ill-mannered oaf, an utter boor if not an outright cad, it is impossible to understand what she sees in him.
Of course she reacts to his constant taunts by going on an all-out nightclub drinking spree with him, even to the extent of ending up in his apartment to wrap up the evening. (Nothing much happens, but I imagine in 1936, the entire audience was holding their breath.)
Fleeing back to Lynnville the next morning, Theodora is tracked down by her not-so-secret admirer, who manages to make himself even more dislikable, if that’s possible, but of course in the movies, anything’s possible, isn’t it?
When the tables turn on Michael Grant, though, and do they ever, that’s when the training wheels come off, and Theodore lives up to the title of the movie – does she go wild? yes! – and it’s Michael Grant who faces …
I won’t tell you what he faces, but it was nice to see him in the predicament he finds himself in. Nice, but not particularly funny.
If you were to ask me, which I guess you are, since you’ve read this far, I liked Irene Dunne’s character a lot more when she was playing the innocent Theodora (although a Theodorea with a secret) a lot more than I did the wild Theodora, with a vast array of designer dresses and hairdos that do not especially flatter her.
Rather than wild, she looked to me more like a small child playing dress-up, but what had to pass for wild on the screen in the mid-1930s was a lot more innocent than what you can see on your TV screen today.
Irene Dunne was nominated for an Oscar in the role, and from all accounts, I’m in the minority in my opinion of this movie, and I thought you should know that too.
August 4th, 2010 at 10:44 pm
While I liked this one a lot more than you did, the fact that it is widely considered among the very top flight of screwball comedies has always seemed inexplicable. Not only is it not in the class of, say, THE AWFUL TRUTH, BRINGING UP BABY, THE LADY EVE, HIS GIRL FRIDAY etc. that it is often grouped with; but I wouldn’t put it close to the next tier of screwball comedies (HANDS ACROSS THE TABLE, IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT, MIDNIGHT, YOU CAN’T TAKE IT WITH YOU etc.) either.
Part of the problem for me is that Irene Dunne is not my idea of a screwball lead. But it was a huge hit on its release. My parents were around back then and both loved it. I understand my dad’s enjoyment — he was the boom operator on it and it was an enjoyable shoot — but my mom’s appreciation for Irene Dunne — “she was always such a lady” — is a mystery to me on this one.
August 4th, 2010 at 11:14 pm
Rick
I think you’re right on the money when you say that Irene Dunne is not your idea of a screwball lead. This movie has some of the elements of a screwball comedy, but perhaps Irene Dunne really is too much of a lady. She’s too vulnerable, she’s not brash or brassy enough, even when she’s supposed to be.
I don’t know if I’ll watch this one again, which I often do when there are aspects of a movie that I don’t understand — why this one simply didn’t click for me, for example — but there are parts of it that I enjoyed, the quieter, more subtle type of humor, not the screwball stuff.
By the way, in case anyone is wondering, the kinds of movies I do laugh out loud at — well, I watched one not too long ago: HARD BOILED MAHONEY, starring Leo Gorcey and the Bowery Boys. I watched it last week just before my short hiatus, and I only now remembered that I haven’t written it up.
Of course to do so would probably mean having to watch it again. I don’t know if I’m ready for that, though.
August 4th, 2010 at 11:08 pm
I like this a bit better than you or Rick, but it has not aged well, it’s satire and screwball elements perhaps too out of date for us today. Ironically this plot would still have worked well into the early 1960’s (it did work as soap opera in PEYTON PLACE and RETURN TO PEYTON PLACE), but the idea of anyone writing a racy novel and having to hide because of it seems like science fiction today. The author of the TRUE BLOOD series is a huge celebrity in her small southern home town, despite vampires, violence, sex, and other racy elements to spare.
I should point out Irene Dunne stars in the first film on Rick’s list of the best screwball comedies (THE AWFUL TRUTH), and might also mention that I don’t think anyone else would put IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT in the second tier of anything, nor MIDNIGHT, or YOU CAN’T TAKE IT WITH YOU. Most critics would list those, MY MAN GODFREY, TWENTIETH CENTURY, and NOTHING SACRED as the best of the best.
In general screwball has held up better than most genre films, though some of the earliest examples are dated now. This one creaks a bit because it is so much a picture of a time pretty remote to us.
I’m not a big Irene Dunne fan, but then I look at the films she is in and find myself wondering why since most of them are on the must watch list. From James Whale’s version of SHOWBOAT to PENNY SERENADE to I REMEMBER MAMA and THE MUDLARK it’s a remarkable career for any actress.
August 4th, 2010 at 11:21 pm
David
That long list of Irene Dunne films is certainly impressive, all right. For some reason I was thinking of her in LIFE WITH FATHER earlier this evening; I don’t know why, as I haven’t seen the movie in a long, long time.
Without watching THEODORA again, I’ll have to stick to my first paragraph in my reply to Rick, though, as my attempt to explain her on-screen appeal — to me, at least. See the first photo I included at the top of my review. I think it says a lot about her and the kind of presence she projected on film.
— Steve
August 5th, 2010 at 12:00 am
I think that line ‘she was such a lady’ summed up Dunne’s career and popularity. She was one of a group of stars who don’t really have equivalents in today’s films, the ‘great ladies’ — Dunne, Norma Shearer, Kay Francis, Greer Garson, Loretta Young, Deborah Kerr, and everyone’s favorite wife Myrna Loy (Loy and Young both had many ingenue roles too early on).
And most of them did one or two screwball comedies (Dunne and Loy much more than that), though in general in Dunne’s films she is the sane still voice while everyone else is manic as in THE JOY OF LIVING where Dunne is the sane member of the family trying to hold everything together while romanced by Douglas Fairbanks Jr..
But screwball comedy is an odd fit for Dunne who I always think of more in terms of films like CIMARRON, THE AGE OF INNOCENCE, THE WHITE CLIFFS OF DOVER, BACK STREET, and LOVE AFFAIR (remade as the weeper AN AFFAIR TO REMEMBER). That said, she does star in two of the best screwball comedies of all time, THE AWFUL TRUTH and MY FAVORITE WIFE, both with Cary Grant.
Still, looking at her screwball comedies it’s an impressive list; THEODORA GOES WILD, THE JOY OF LIVING, HIGH WIDE AND HANDSOME, THE AWFUL TRUTH, MY FAVORITE WIFE, LADY IN A JAM (the least of her comedies), and TOGETHER AGAIN.
Ironically my favorite Dunne film is more offbeat than any of those — it’s A GUY NAMED JOE where she plays a pilot who seems to spend half the film with her nose smudged with grease.
August 5th, 2010 at 5:45 am
I think you hit the nail on the head – Irene Dunne is not a screwball actress.
But I was struck in reading Steve’s plot summary (I haven’t seen this in 25 years) that with very little tweaking it could be any (totally unfunny) Jennifer Anniston/Katherine Heigl-Gerard Butler movie.
August 5th, 2010 at 3:56 pm
Jeff
It might take some tweaking, but I suspect that there are some people with extremely conservative views who might take it amiss if someone in their circle wrote a very progressive type of novel. Maybe some things don’t change.
But as far as Jennifer Anniston, Katherine Heigl and Gerard Butler are concerned, I have a confession to make. I have seen none of the three in any of their films. I suppose I’m missing something, but from the tone of your suggestion, may I also suppose not?
— Steve
August 5th, 2010 at 6:10 am
I’m with Steve here: a fine cast but no laughs, perhaps because director Boleslawski was more at home with lush romantic themes like GARDEN OF ALLAH.
August 5th, 2010 at 5:55 pm
Well, I’d say that Gerard Butler is certainly worth catching in the tartly sentimental Scottish film “Dear Frankie”.
August 5th, 2010 at 7:14 pm
I’ll have to correct myself. I saw Butler in THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA, which both my wife and I enjoyed. DEAR FRANKIE I had to look up, though. From the reviews and IMDB comments, I think you summed it up very nicely in just two words, Rick, “tartly sentimental” — a phrase you can’t apply to many movies made any more, which is too bad.
August 6th, 2010 at 12:13 am
I’m probably in the minority here in that I don’t think the actors today are the problem. Given the material some of them likely could have done the kind of films we so often discuss here. After all, aside from being a western star, Joel McCrea was one of the staples of the screwball comedy school — even Randolph Scott did one — and damn well (MY FAVORITE WIFE). For that matter Errol Flynn did a couple — nothing major, but entertaining little films.
I think the problem is with the writers and directors. I just don’t think they know how to write comedy — at least comedy that doesn’t rely on scatology and jokes about bodily functions. Screwball and romantic comedy in particular depends on a delicate balance between manic humor, romantic chemistry, eccentric characters, and complicated plots and I just don’t see anyone today writing or directing films like that.
But I don’t blame the actors because among those who did screwball — and perfectly well — were such unlikely actors as Edward G. Robinson (John Ford’s THE WHOLE TRUTH, BROTHER ORCHID, A SLIGHT CASE OF LARCENY), Humphrey Bogart (IT ALL CAME TRUE), James Cagney (THE BRIDE CAME C.O.D. with Bette Davis), Ronald Colman (THE TALK OF THE TOWN), John Wayne (WITHOUT RESERVATIONS), and Ronald Reagan (THE VOICE OF THE TURTLE).
But I agree that there are no real laughs in THEODORA GOES WILD, though I would argue that Melvyn Douglas character is pretty common to the genre, and along the line of the character he usually played in these films — he wasn’t a lot nicer in NINOTCHKA, one of the best of the lot, with, again, the most unlikely comic actress of all time — Greta Garbo.
Screwball was always a director and writers medium. I don’t see any directors and writers today who seem to either understand it or be able to handle it. Frankly they can’t even handle the more mundane romantic comedy ala SLEEPLESS IN SEATTLE.
I won’t go into my theory on why other than to state it broadly. All today’s directors and writers know is movies and television (in some cases comic books). They don’t know literature, theater (particularly farce), or life. Their movies fall flat because they are imitating other movies and not writing from observation. Howard Hawks and Preston Sturges were both writers who came out silent film — Sturges in particular had worked with some of the great silent comics like Harold Lloyd, George Stevens visual style was second only to John Ford, Lubitch and Billy Wilder both brought a European sensibility and broad knowledge of theatrical farce to the genre.
Today’s directors watched DUMB AND DUMBER and thought the fart jokes were funny. They know movies, but they have no depth because that’s all they know in many cases.
August 6th, 2010 at 1:17 am
Actors are always at the mercies of their writers and directors, that’s a given. Your second paragraph, David, the one about “scatology and jokes about bodily functions,” is as close to the truth regarding screwball comedy as anything I’ve ever read.
I can’t watch movies with fart jokes and worse, and everybody knows what I mean, I’m sure, not even when Blake Edwards did it, way back when. It’s embarrassing, it’s crude, there’s no thought behind it, and I suppose that’s why audiences find them funny. Not me.
Getting back to the actors, though, and Jennifer Anniston, in particular, as long as Jeff brought her up. I’ve looked through the list of her movie and TV appearances, and while I know her, I’ve never seen her in anything, not even FRIENDS, not once.
So I don’t know one thing about her acting ability. Is she at all comparable to some of the women that were brought up earlier? Irene Dunne, Norma Shearer, Kay Francis, Greer Garson, Loretta Young, Deborah Kerr, Myrna Loy?
I can put Glenn Close, to pick one other current example, in the same category as the above, and I can see her doing screwball comedy. I don’t see the same depth in Jennifer Anniston’s roles, but as you point out, it’s more likely to be the roles than her acting ability.
It’s unfair to her to use her as the single example I’m using, but — those of you who have seen her in movies and on TV — does she have the spark in her, and the ability, to do screwball comedy, given the appropriate script and the proper direction?
August 6th, 2010 at 2:19 am
Didn’t Glenn Close do a film called “Maxie” about an old film star reincarnated in another woman’s body (totally from memory from like 25 years ago, so I may be totally wrong).
This is a fascinating discussion. I think I have this film on videotape. I still have a VCR, but am now not tempted to watch it. I like Melvyn Douglas, however. Another nice job by him was in The Old Dark House (screwball horror?).
Speaking of unbearable male characters in screwball, I’ve always intensely disliked Cary Grant’s character in The Awful Truth. Personally I was rooting for Ralph Bellamy.
August 6th, 2010 at 5:36 am
Curt
The people in screwball comedy are usually ones you would want to avoid in real life. What kind of a masochist would want a life with either Cary Grant or Katherine Hepburn’s character in BRINGING UP BABY, or, for that matter can you imagine a pair who deserve each other more than Grant and Rosalind Russell in HIS GIRL FRIDAY (Hawks ‘insight’ that FRONT PAGE was a romance, may be the brightest improvement on a great idea in film history)?
Though there are screwball comedies with more or less real people in them, by and large you wouldn’t want to actually be any of them or be involved with them. For instance the most sympathetic character in LIBELED LADY is Myrna Loy’s stuck up heiress! Melvyn Douglas is a cad in NINOTCHKA, Carol Lombard and John Barrymore are monsters in TWENTIETH CENTURY, and James Stewart’s cynical private eye and Claudette Colbert’s screwy poet would drive you nuts in IT’S A WONDERFUL WORLD.
Screwball is very often about people you wouldn’t want to be caught in an elevator with. Can you imagine actually marrying into the family in Capra’s YOU CAN’T TAKE IT WITH YOU or LaCava’s MY MAN GODFREY?
Steve
Anniston is no Glenn Close (I’d also put Meryl Streep in the Close category— though I would put she and Close more in the great actress category of Hepburn and Davis than the ‘great lady’ category which is a little different), but she is a perfectly good light comic actress and even did a good dramatic role right after FRIENDS where she played a normal young woman working as a checker. She could certainly handle better material. The worst I can say about her is she has lousy taste in the roles she chooses. The problem isn’t her — or Drew Barrymore — it’s the films they do.
A number of serious actresses were good in screwball comedy including Hepburn, Barbara Stanwyck, Irene Dunne, Bette Davis, and Margaret Sullivan. Though, in the case of Glenn Close I would imagine MAXIE is better off forgotten. It was not one of her career highs.
But I do blame the shallowness of the creative team on the the problem. The same thing happened to some extent to the hard boiled school of writing where for a while too many writers knew Chandler and Hammett and Macdonald, but not people, or the genre, or life.
Any time any any genre of any kind of art becomes too self reverential it becomes a problem. Imitation is fine, but unless it is accompanied by insight and innovation it is like a mule — it may pull a load, but it isn’t going to give birth to anything new.
I personally call it the Brian De Palma Syndrome where you end up with imitators imitating his imitation of Hitchcock. It’s sort of like a dub of an old VHS tape — at some point all you have is a suggestion of the original.
August 6th, 2010 at 5:50 am
I wasn’t talking about the acting ability of the trio mentioned above. Rather, it was the ‘rom com’ (as current parlance has it) movies they’ve been in, in particular the ones the named ladies have starred in opposite Butler in the last 2-3 years.
August 6th, 2010 at 8:08 am
I have to agree that perhaps it’s not the actors today that are responsible for the mediocre and uninteresting movies. I put much of the blame on the desire of producers and directors to always be aiming for the blockbuster film to make hundreds of millions. Also I’m tired of special effects and the films that concentrate on these effects instead of characterization and stories based on great screenplays or books.
It seems that Hollywood is always aiming for the so called “date crowd” of teenagers and young film goers in their twenties. This group seems to love special effects, comic book movies, unbelievable action films, and fart type jokes. I actually have heard young viewers complain about black and white “old” films and films with subtitles.
August 6th, 2010 at 2:55 pm
Not all the ‘effects’ films are mindless. Christopher Nolan certainly doesn’t mind leaving his audience both breathless and trying to figure out what is going on. DARK KNIGHT may have been a comic book movie, but it was also a strong character piece, and viewers are going back to INCEPTION multiple times to explore the various depths of the film (or just to see if they finally understand it).
But the youth culture is self fulfilling since they don’t make films adults are comfortable with adults don’t go to movies — and yet when a good film does get made and noticed people across the board do go see it.
There are good grown up films made. George Clooney makes them fairly consistently and does well with them. That Meryl Streep film about Julia Child, JULIA, was made for adults and did quite well.
For that matter I thought both the films based on Dan Brown’s DA VINCI CODE and ANGELS AND DEMONS were entertaining fare — certainly not intellectual, but they were about ideas and puzzles and not just explosions. For that matter the Bourne films offered a nice balance of actor, plot, and action and Daniel Craig has starred in the two most adult James Bond films of the franchise history.
Sadly those are the exceptions, but then the good films mostly were exceptions. Outside of the magic year of 1939 most years produced an about equal number of bombs and hits. And then too, many ‘classics’ like BRINGING UP BABY and IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE were horrible bombs at the box office when they were made. BABY was considered such a flop it cost Hepburn her contract at RKO. James Stewart had to go to Broadway and do HARVEY to restore what LIFE did to his career at the time.
I can think of some fine films of the last few years though that did well if not super well — GOODNIGHT AND GOOD LUCK, THE CONSTANT GARDNER, THE DEPARTED, MATCH POINT, A VERY LONG ENGAGEMENT, SYRIANNA, THE GOOD GERMAN, MICHAEL CLAYTON, THERE WILL BE BLOOD … Most of those did well critically and at the box office.
But I will grant that the old fashioned movie movie seems to be dead — or at least hiding out as computer animation — which has produced the only decent romantic comedies and screwball comedy of recent years.
August 6th, 2010 at 6:17 pm
The Sandra Bullock film The Proposal was a big hit last year and would be an approximation to classical screwball.
I think with the exception of The Departed, the equivalent of the classical gangster film, none of David’s listed films made more than 50 million in the US. That’s okay money, but I doubt approximate to the great serious hits of the 30s through the 70s. Some of Clint Eastwood’s films modern films (Gran Torino) have been big hits though.
I like some of the male leads in screwball films: Don Ameche in Midnight and Joel McCrea in The Palm Beach Story (and The More the Merrier–though that may not really be real screwball). Henry Fonda is more victim than anything else in The Lady Eve. The women in these films tend to be more rapacious (Barbara Stanwyck most of all; Claudette Colbert at least gets an exculpatory speech–not altogether convincing–in Midnight).
August 6th, 2010 at 6:30 pm
THEODORA GOES WILD is so dull. It’s amazing that its so often cited as a major comedy.
I’ve only seen a little of Jennifer Anniston, too. Enjoyed her PICTURE PERFECT, a light comedy-drama that is perhaps a modern updating of older romantic comedy traditions.
The book GEORGE GALLUP IN HOLLYWOOD looks at what the famed pollster learned in 1940’s Hollywood. Most of the film audience in the 1940’s was teenagers, too, with the next biggest group the 20-25 year olds. A few films certainly were exceptions and reached older adult audiences, notably GONE WITH THE WIND. But mainly, movie audiences were as juvenile in the 40’s as in the 2010’s. The sheer rottenness of many of today’s films is not easily blamed on audience age – despite the way critics often try.
August 6th, 2010 at 8:26 pm
I’ve often heard that women dominated among filmgoers in the 1930s (the type of person portrayed by Mia Farrow in The Purple Rose of Cairo; hence the popularity of the woman’s picture of Bette Davis, etc.), but I’ve never actually seen any data.
August 6th, 2010 at 9:20 pm
If the audience demographics are about the same now as they were in the 1930s and 40s — except for perhaps Curt’s suggestion that women dominated in the 30s, which if true may be a factor to consider — then as Mike says, the rottenness of today’s film is to be blamed on what?
Let’s go back to David’s comment #14:
“Any time any any genre of any kind of art becomes too self reverential it becomes a problem. Imitation is fine, but unless it is accompanied by insight and innovation it is like a mule — it may pull a load, but it isn’t going to give birth to anything new.
“I personally call it the Brian De Palma Syndrome where you end up with imitators imitating his imitation of Hitchcock. It’s sort of like a dub of an old VHS tape — at some point all you have is a suggestion of the original.”
Preceded by:
“But I do blame the shallowness of the creative team on the the problem,” which has been his primary talking point throughout the discussion.
And I don’t think anyone can deny it. There’s a lot of money involved in the movie-making business, and a lot of risk, and the best way to avoid risk is to follow the crowds, imitation not innovation, and not good, old-fashioned story-telling.
The same thing is true in the world of comic books. Frank Miller came along and revived Daredevil and Batman, but in the process ruined the whole industry. Heroes now have to be edgier, but in the process of imitating imitators, they’ve become moody, broody and crappy.
Small independent comics are where the interesting stories are, and the same is true for movies. It’s not the big studios who tell the best stories; it’s the independent movie makers. They’re out there, and even once in a while from the big guys; you just have to look for them.
And as for Jennifer Anniston, I was only using her as an example who came quickly to mind — as someone who’s movies I have not seen, but who is popular enough, and I was only wondering if she was good enough to play screwball comedy as well as “rom com,” which of course a phrase I had not heard before, but why not.
I don’t think she’ll mind my using her as an example, but to make up for it anyway, maybe I ought to see one of her films. It wouldn’t hurt me, I don’t think.
August 7th, 2010 at 12:21 am
Steve
My only point about actors is that while a star can certainly help a film, a good film can be built around any half competent actor with decent screen presence given all the other factors. That isn’t to knock stars and star presence, but there are plenty of good films with only competent actors and few good films with mediocre directing and writing.
I really do think the problem is too many films trying to imitate what someone else did instead of find their own vision.
I sometimes wish there was one director out there that instead of wanting to be Hitch, or Hawks, or John Ford, or Orson Welles, or Spielberg, or one of the other auteurs, who just wanted to be Michael Curtiz, Woody Van Dyke, or even Clarence Brown.
Curt
Though more subdued than many MORE THE MERRIER is clearly screwball comedy, so is THE DEVIL AND MISS JONES also with Jean Arthur and TALK OF THE TOWN. George Stevens films tended to be less frantic than many of the screwball school.
I think you are right about the audience. Then as now women determined the films the family unit went to see to some extent, and I don’t think the demographics are all that much different, but the people at the top today are trying to assemble movies based on things like demographics and charts while earlier moguls worked by instinct and the seat of their pants. Art, not being a science, tends to respond to the seat of the pants school better than to charts and demographics.
THE PROPOSAL did well enough but was widely critiqued as one of the worst and most annoying films of the year as I recall. Not that audiences always care or critics are always right.
And keep in mind the way they keep books in Hollywood GONE WITH THE WIND has yet to make a profit. As a business it makes publishing look sane, and publishing is about the least business like proposition that I can think of. Trying to run it as a typical corporation is part of the problem today — art can’t be made by corporate decisions.
Corporations are good for manufacturing canned food and packaging products, but movies are at some level always an art form.
Still, the whole imitation thing is nothing new. Deana Durbin’s whole career existed because Louis B. Mayer wanted his own Shirley Temple.
Jane Powell tells the story of being on the MGM lot one day and seeing Debbie Reynolds. As Reynolds passed, she overheard someone say: “That’s the new Jane Powell.” As Powell points out, the ‘old’ Jane Powell was only 18. Even in the Golden Age they were trying to manufacture magic. Sometimes it works, but mostly it tastes like canned corn.
August 7th, 2010 at 12:50 am
I haven’t seen The Proposal, but it seems to lack the sophistication associated with these thirties films. There are other films, though, like Sandra Bullock’s While You Were Sleeping from the 1990s, or a number with Julia Roberts, that might qualify. They show there is still that screwball impulse, anyway.
August 7th, 2010 at 1:36 am
There are some good romantic comedies still made — last years JULIA was one, but considering how many they make each year and how bad most of them are it isn’t very heartening for those of us who love the genre.
For that matter the SEX IN THE CITY films were both big hits, and both fall into the romantic comedy and even screwball schools. Whether they were good ones or not they were big hits.
Much of the sophistication of the old Hollywood had to do with the things they couldn’t show. The foot on the floor school of film making meant they had to be a lot more inventive when it came to suggesting the sexual side of the equation.
I’m not sure today’s audience would would get the ending of MY FAVORITE WIFE where Cary Grant and Irene Dunne have been estranged because she was shipwrecked for seven years and declared dead, and after numerous misadventures find themselves alone in their old vacation cabin and after talking it over agree to see how things go and to wait until Christmas to renew the romantic part of their marriage. A few minutes later there is a knock at Dunne’s bedroom door and there stands Grant — dressed as Santa Claus. The camera pulls to an exterior shot of the cabin, the lights go out, Christmas music plays, and
Fade out.
I’m not sure most of today’s audience would get it — much less the idea that a couple might consider forgoing instant gratification. In some ways the greater freedom of today’s films can be limiting both to the romance and the comedy elements.
I would argue there is nothing in BASIC INSTINCT half as sexy as Cary Grant’s head on the pillow next to Ingrid Bergman in NOTORIOUS even though both are fully clothed and he has that famous one foot on the floor, and the scene in BALL OF FIRE when Barbara Stanwyck has to stand on a stack of books to teach Gary Cooper how to kiss or in THE LADY EVE when she takes Henry Fonda back to her cabin to change her shoe have an erotic quality nudity and explicit sex can’t always approach, certainly not while maintaining the delicate balance of humor and eroticism.
As with the special effects, just because you can do things that haven’t been done before doesn’t always mean success. Almost all of the really successful 3D films have had in common the factor that they were also very good films — not just visuals. Good stories and not just eye catching.
In some ways we are in a period not unlike the early days of the talkie, where Hollywood briefly struggled with how to use the new technology to do what the silent film was already doing.
But romantic comedy and screwball comedy are a special case and I’m not sure they can ever come back the way the once were. Something new may emerge, hopefully, but it is going to take film makers who are trying to something different and not just recreate the past.
April 27th, 2024 at 8:28 pm
To even suggest Irene Dunne was not a sensation in films goes far against the hysterical and historical record. Five Academy Award nominations, and the topper, in her three films with Cary Grant, Irene’s name comes first.