Warner Bros were emboldened by the box office success of San Antonio to try Errol Flynn in something different – to wit, a remarriage comedy. This is a subgenre of romantic comedy about two people who were married who get back together eg The Awful Truth, The Parent Trap. No doubt divorce was something very much on the mind of the audience with all those soldiers coming home from the war.
This is a fun movie which has a lot of charm and Errol in terrific form but has major story problems: Errol is celebrating a year’s divorce from the beautiful Eleanor Parker. They clearly love each other and only broke up because of Errol’s infidelity (go figure) and Parker’s nagging mother. But he wants her back and she wants him back… only then she busts him dining with a blonde.
They separate again over Christmas, Errol crashes Parker’s Christmas celebrations and wins her back over the attentions of a nerdy lawyer… only to have the blonde turn up again. The third act then kicks off with the arrival of a beefy soldier (Forrest Tucker) whom Errol’s daughter has been writing to under an assumed name – isn’t this the plot of Dear Ruth? Why wait til now to introduce him? So Errol gets jealous and blah blah… but isn’t the basic problem Errol’s infidelity? And does anyone think this is going to change after he and Parker get back together?
I think this film needed to have had Errol and Parker break up for a fixable reason i.e. a misunderstanding or Parker's conniving mother or something - otherwise it's a hollow victory when they get back together because the problems aren't going to go away. Also there's no "spine" to the story; most remarriage comedies use the same spine - one of them is getting married to an inapproriate partner (usually played by Ralph Bellamy) and the other has to stop it; I don't know why they didn't do that here. The Forrest Tucker plot doesn't really work this way because Forrest is a likeable guy but Parker clearly never really likes him romantically, she just uses him to make Errol jealous.
Errol is perfectly cast as the womanising artist, full of charm. He goes all-out in his performance: he does the “mirror routine” with another actor (both dressed as Santas), he sings, does backflips, makes bird sounds, cracks a joke about Robin Hood, impersonates Humphrey Bogart, acts with a child actor (this is one of the few times Errol played a “father” role). Just like Four’s a Crowd and Footsteps in the Dark, one just wishes the script had been better.
Parker is very pretty and charming as his ex-wife, though she doesn’t have much of a character: it is a bit spineless of her to keep going back to Errol. I would loved to have seen Parker as her Scaramouche character play opposite Errol – now that would have been something special. Nonetheless, a fun movie. Shame it isn't in colour.
No comments:
Post a Comment