Saturday, August 06, 2016

Movie review - "Isn't it Romantic?" (1948) **

To understand why this was made you need to remember that nostalgic family pieces in historical settings were all the rage in the 1940s - Meet Me in St Louis, Life with Father, I Remember Mama, etc.

This load of old codswallop is set in Indiana during Reconstruction, and focuses on three sisters - Veronica Lake, Mona Freeman and Mary Hatcher. Their idiotic father is obsessed with the Civil War (he runs around in a Confederate uniform) and won't get a job. I think he's meant to be loveable ol' dad but he just comes across as a lazy, racist separatist, uncharmingly played by Roland Culver. We're supposed to feel for him at the end when he realises he got swindled; I wanted him to shoot himself, like that Confederate officer in The Ox Bow Incident.

These sort of movies are hard to pull off - director Henry King was one who could, as was John Ford, but Norman McLeod fails. He's not helped by a B level cast. Lake seems uncomfortable; Freeman and Hatcher are B list. There's a few musical numbers - maybe with colour and more elaborate musical numbers it might have gone over.

Billy de Wolfe is tiresome as Lake's love interest; Patric Knowles un-charming as the guy who romances then swindles Lake. This film just annoyed me. There were cute period detail I suppose like going to see an early silent film.

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