The Cary Grant List

An ongoing project to survey the best films of individual decades, genres, and filmmakers.
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Matt
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Re: The Cary Grant List

#101 Post by Matt » Mon Feb 15, 2021 4:04 pm

therewillbeblus wrote:
Mon Feb 15, 2021 12:40 am
I watched all his films and am still struggling to concoct a list of 20.
I think I am also likely to end up with a list of 19, but it won't be the same 19. Most of the bottom will be Grant performances I've repeatedly enjoyed in otherwise mediocre films (most of which I've already mentioned upthread). Here are the 11 films from your list that overlap with mine as it stands. I still have a good deal of rewatching to do.

North by Northwest
Only Angels Have Wings
Bringing Up Baby
His Girl Friday
Notorious
The Bishop’s Wife
The Awful Truth
I Was a Male War Bride
Suspicion
Mr. Lucky
Charade

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therewillbeblus
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Re: The Cary Grant List

#102 Post by therewillbeblus » Mon Feb 15, 2021 4:34 pm

I'm curious to hear your thoughts on the obvious omissions of Holiday and To Catch a Thief, especially the former which is so widely beloved, though it admittedly took me a few watches to appreciate all it was doing

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Matt
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Re: The Cary Grant List

#103 Post by Matt » Mon Feb 15, 2021 5:15 pm

It's been at least 10 years since I watched either Holiday or To Catch a Thief, and I can't recall any particular fondness for either. I will rewatch them soon, but they probably don't need my help to boost their reputation around these parts.

I do want to put in a plug for One Upon a Honeymoon. Don't be fooled by the names on the poster into thinking this is a good movie. It's not. But there are one or two scenes between Grant and Ginger Rogers that are shimmering gems of light physical comedy and banter. When I think about why I adore Cary Grant, those scenes are among the ones that come to mind. The same goes for The Bachelor and the Bobby Soxer, which (along with Mr. Blandings) is a great movie to just have on while you do other things.

I think Michael Kerpan said this already in another thread, but every time I watch The Philadelphia Story I like it less. The problem for me is the script, not the direction or any of the performers. However, there are moments in Grant's performance that are indelibly imprinted on my brain like religious icons. In the first scene with Dexter, Tracy, her mother, and sister, Grant makes some very small, very funny looks and gestures that lend a hint of absurdity to the proceedings. It's as if he's had these kinds of sour arguments with Tracy so often in the past that they now perform them almost as a Vaudeville routine in which he's the straight man. He stands or sits very still as Hepburn flutters around him, but he's able to draw a little attention away from her with small reactions. It makes the scene more vibrant, more prickly, more give-and-take in contrast to some of the sleepy, syrupy scenes that come later.

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Matt
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Re: The Cary Grant List

#104 Post by Matt » Tue Feb 16, 2021 2:26 pm

To follow up, I watched To Catch a Thief last night. I suppose there's no reason it shouldn't make my top 20 list. Grant gives an appealing performance in a well-made, satisfying film. Everything in the frame, particularly the spectacular Côte d'Azur locations, looks absolutely gorgeous. But I would say for me it comes down to the question, "Is it a good Cary Grant film—could I envision no one other than Grant in this role—or is it just a good film?" In this case, I think it's the latter. Grant doesn't do anything in this film (well, one or two looks, maybe) that sets his performance apart from his other roles of the time. I'm finding myself favoring performance above overall quality in my ranking, so it's very likely that I'll put To Catch a Thief, a fine film with a perfectly decent performance, one or two steps below Once Upon a Honeymoon, an undistinguished film with brief moments of brilliant performing.

I also watched the first 20 minutes of both Holiday and In Name Only last night. I may definitely come around on the former, but it somehow turns out that I've never seen the latter (or I've seen it and forgotten everything about it)! I like Grant's palpable anger in this first part, and I'm glad Kay Francis plays the villain because she's one actress I don't think I've ever liked in anything.

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Re: The Cary Grant List

#105 Post by therewillbeblus » Tue Feb 16, 2021 3:57 pm

I can understand that feeling about Grant in To Catch a Thief but while he downplays himself into an enigma of a man, that's precisely why I think nobody else could play this character so effectively. I already explained why a few pages back, but the trick of Grant's charm casting a spell on the audience, to deviate our attention completely away from his impenetrability and see a mirage of a soul that becomes true for us, seals the power of cinematic manipulation through performance at its finest.

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Re: The Cary Grant List

#106 Post by therewillbeblus » Tue Feb 16, 2021 4:19 pm

Rayon Vert wrote:
Sat Jan 23, 2021 4:59 pm
The thing with the Signature edition according to the blu-ray.com reviews is that it uses another master, a 4K remaster. Kind of frustrating to purchase a blu if you know there's a better version available. It's got a high enough IMDB rating that I'm willing to give it a blind-buy shot.
It's on backorder, but the Signature edition of Father Goose is listed on DeepDiscount here for a regular price, and with the 15% code currently in effect, if you want to buy it now's probably a good time

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Re: The Cary Grant List

#107 Post by Rayon Vert » Tue Feb 16, 2021 4:55 pm

Thanks T. I ended up going for the regular, and I know I'll probably regret even going for that! :)

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domino harvey
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Re: The Cary Grant List

#108 Post by domino harvey » Wed Feb 17, 2021 3:09 pm

Rayon Vert wrote:
Tue Feb 16, 2021 4:55 pm
Thanks T. I ended up going for the regular, and I know I'll probably regret even going for that! :)
TWBB as the lead hooligan in Graham Greene's the Destructors is now canon

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Shrew
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Re: The Cary Grant List

#109 Post by Shrew » Wed Feb 24, 2021 4:18 pm

Just a reminder for anyone that doesn’t want to buy Father Goose that 14 Cary Grant films are on the Criterion Channel but leaving at the end of February. They are: She Done Him Wrong, I’m No Angel, Bringing Up Baby, Holiday, My Favorite Wife, The Talk of the Town, Arsenic and Old Lace, The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer, Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House, Indiscreet, Operation Petticoat, The Grass Is Greener, That Touch of Mink, Father Goose.

Indiscreet (Donen, 58)
Colorful but not terribly energetic film split along the spine into a technicolor Eurotrip romance (with a touch of melancholy doom—see, he’s married) and a deflated would-be screwball (oh, he’s not really married). This is ultimately more of a showcase for Bergman than Grant, who’s mostly just called on to be a fantasy object of desire a la An Affair to Remember. The exception is the party sequence 2/3 through, in which Grant’s deadly serious romantic lead starts capering about like wacky 1930s Cary Grant while Bergman gives enough eye-rolling reaction shots to power 3 or 4 tumblr pages (I’m honestly shocked no one’s tried to make her slow clap here the new citizenkaneslowclap.gif). Donen fills the frame with colorful baubles—the oodles of art in massive primary-colored frames adoring the walls of Bergman’s apartment, the weird wooden foyer, the red lamps dotting the background of the afore-mentioned party. There’s also a weird Hitchcockian moment at the beginning as Bergman’s servants jostle open a door to find her home early, perhaps a salute to the previous Bergman-Grant pairing?

Operation Petticoat (Edwards, 59)
Having grown up without the Pink Panther films, I came far too late to Blake Edwards to build up any appreciation or tolerance for this film. A tonal mishmash of war nostalgia, sex comedy, and bureaucratic antics, it all mainly gave me a deeper respect for what MASH pulled off. The other plus is that Grant is more engaged here than in most of these later roles, but he’s mainly just a straight man to the antics of his crew and the curves of the female passengers.

The Grass Is Greener (Donen, 60)
Old-money Brit Cary Grant and wife Deborah Kerr inhabit an estate that’s been turned into a living museum to pay for its upkeep. American millionaire Robert Mitchum strays out of the tour and immediately starts hitting on Kerr while Grant fumes about how he can’t make up her own mind for her. I liked this more than Indiscreet, even though the former is better—at least more energetically—directed. That’s partially because the play-based script is pleasantly verbose, and partially because I can’t help but read all the Mitchum-Kerr scenes as a continuation of Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison. I imagine if you’re attuned to British accents than Grant sounds ridiculous as an aristocrat, but I have no ear for such things. It’s true that, as pointed out above, there’s very little especially Cary Grant in his performance here, but he’s also not bad. Overall it’s the kind of pleasant-enough background noise that might fit in at the bottom of my list.

That Touch of Mink (Delbert Mann, 62)
I fairly enjoyed this one—which is probably due less to the film itself than to the mediocre quality of the other pickings here, and the fact I’ve never seen Pillow Talk. Granted, 39 year-old Doris Day still harping on her virginity to the point where she’s haunted by a four-poster hotel bed is pretty absurd. And Grant is very near asleep throughout, mainly playing off the cultural memory of his charisma. Grant and Day’s first meeting even plays just like Bergman and Grant’s in Indiscreet. But there are some good gags with Gig Young getting food thrown in his face, Day passing out with her toe stuck in a whisky bottle, and John Astin sleazing it up. But even more than Indiscreet, it makes much more sense on a list for its female lead than on a Grant list.

Father Goose (Nelson, 64)
I like the first half-hour, with a disheveled Grant sniping with Trevor Howard over the radio. It gives a peek into what Grant—here looking schlubby, scruffy, and bloated—might have done had he not retired from acting and started to lean into his age. But then the kids show up, and it turns out that he’s just been Cary Grant in hiding all along. But at least the kids are cute enough—the less said about the romance the better.

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Re: The Cary Grant List

#110 Post by Rayon Vert » Sun Feb 28, 2021 12:18 am

This Is the Night (Tuttle 1932). Archetypal Paramount: adultery on the Continent. The plot is a bit elementary and it’s not as funny as it could be but this was still quite likeable on the strength of the charm of the performances. I don’t think I’d seen Lili Damita before (“Chou-Chou”) but she’s remarkably engaging and fresh. I was surprised at how Grant’s first role is already sizeable. He’s got the thankless role but he’s already a strong performer and to a large degree the actor we recognize and love.


Devil and the Deep (Gering 1932). Marital infidelity in the drama thriller mode. Grant only features in the beginning, giving us a taste of what happens to the men the paranoid naval commander suspects his wife cheats with, Gary Cooper being the main course. This is a Tallulah Bankhead heavy melodrama vehicle, but it’s absorbing because of the intensity of Charles Laughton’s performance and the submarine action curve the film takes because of his maniacal aims. (Good write-up, TW; I did this more superficial write-up before reading yours.)


Hot Saturday (Seiter 1932). All these early films are so far surprising me with the qualities that go along with the imperfections of their small ambitions. I liked this as well. Over half the film plays like a comedy, though, with a very loose narrative, until it turns into the woman’s virtue-in-distress melo, but that’s where the film becomes more interesting, partly on the basis of Carroll’s performance. I was struck again by how established Grant already is in his acting and persona, the early more light comedy feel allowing him the witty, flirtatious persona he plays in some of the later screwballs. This screams pre-Code in a few places, like that scene where Carroll tears off the panties her younger sister is wearing!


Houseboat (Shavelson 1958). Therapy for Archie Leach? - playing the father who tries to repair his absence to wounded kids who’ve also just lost their mother. The dramatic edge of the storyline is played mostly in a light comedy vein. Overall also a film that’s better than I expected, but then there was nothing about this that sounded promising. While there’s nothing very fresh-smelling or unpredictable about it, and it definitely looks undistinguished, it’s also sweet without being cloying. There’s an appealing balance that works in between the amusing enough comedy, the romance across imaginary class (and ethnic) lines with Sophia Loren, and the sensitively-played grieving scenes (the father confronting his son’s questions about death).


Mr. Lucky (Potter 1943). I’d rank this a bit higher than these preceding films, but I still ended up feeling only lukewarm about it. Good scenes especially in the first more comic half (the opening dice face-off, the knitting), but as a wartime message film or a romantic melodrama it’s not fully effective or particularly notable. I’ll agree with the very positive assessment of Grant’s performance here, though - he somehow comes off as simultaneously charmingly sympathetic and disturbingly sociopathic. There’s often something of a dark shadow to Grant’s affable screen persona, but it isn’t usually as pronounced as it is here.

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Re: The Cary Grant List

#111 Post by therewillbeblus » Sun Feb 28, 2021 12:43 am

All I know is that I hated Houseboat and that I want to put a little hook on the back of my suit like in Mr. Lucky so I can make a double-or-nothing bundle

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Re: The Cary Grant List

#112 Post by Rayon Vert » Sun Feb 28, 2021 12:46 am

Didn't it make you feel at least like wanting to live in a run-down houseboat? ;)

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Re: The Cary Grant List

#113 Post by therewillbeblus » Sun Feb 28, 2021 1:10 am

Not particularly, it did make me not want children or Sophia Loren, two things I thought impossible

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Re: The Cary Grant List

#114 Post by Rayon Vert » Sun Feb 28, 2021 1:22 am

I was surprised by how unappealing I found Loren here, even as she comes across physically. She can have that tall, gangly thing going like Ingrid Bergman, and I guess that body type is suited to Grant to some degree because of the height.

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Re: The Cary Grant List

#115 Post by senseabove » Mon Mar 01, 2021 3:39 am

The Grass is Greener — After a very rocky start—Mitchum and Kerr just have no chemistry during that absurd and inexplicable "seduction" scene—I quite enjoyed this. It walks an awkward line, like a grandparent trying to be open-minded without quite getting it—for 1960, it's an improbably earnest detour outside conventionality, but aside from the shot implying actual, honest-to-god extramarital s-e-x occurred, it's also not much bothered out of its moral comfort zone in the end. Unlike Shrew, though, I do find Grant's performance in this to be particularly Granty. I don't know who else could pull off the perfectly pleasantly acidly earnest passive aggressiveness Grant treats Mitchum to during their first encounter—echoes of "Am I, Red" from Philadelphia Story. And in the last quarter, he does a wonderful job playing straight man to a script Donen directs to pretend it isn't the comic, and salvages something in doing so that would have been saccharinely, deathly earnest in the hands of nearly anyone else. Any scenes lacking either Simmons or Grant are nearly unpleasant, but luckily those are brief and infrequent after the set-up, and the scenes where Simmons and Grant get to play off each other are worth the price of admission by themselves.

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knives
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Re: The Cary Grant List

#116 Post by knives » Mon Mar 01, 2021 10:51 pm

Finally giving myself permission to watch for this. Got two blahs and a potential list maker though. Forum favorite Singapore Sue isn’t good, but I’ve seen far worse shorts before. At least it wasn’t as racist as I was expecting. That Touch of Mink as well was just kind of there for me. Everyone here being a million years too old really hurts what is otherwise a fluffy sitcom of a nothing. The jokes at the end with the librarian absolutely slayed though.

The good comes through in the form of Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House. I've been excited to see this one for a while. Loy and Grant with a script by Panama and Frank, I don't really care about Potter, is just too good a treat to pass over. While the film doesn't give Loy nearly enough the rest of the components more than live up to my personal hype showcasing with hilarious misanthropy the best of the remaining three. For example, on the simple level of comedy this works in spades running a thousand funny ideas a second, though contrary to Bringing Up Baby which this weirdly left me thinking of this rush of comedy is shown through rather lazy pacing.

As a Grant film this is also incredibly interesting and makes me wonder how Grant's comedic persona allowed his dramatic persona to survive. Here, as in nearly every other comedy, Grant is completely and totally emasculated from beginning to end in every way imaginable. He's a self imagined cuckold outwitted by his daughters whom he seems totally disinterested in with an occupation that the film treats as having value only as a personal source of income. If not for the basic industriousness he'd practically be a WC Fields character. Though it's that element of caring in his persona that makes Grant an object of emasculation versus Fields' anarchic power. It's the inherent dramatic worth of the Grant persona that allows it to comically fail in this way until any optimism afforded to him or lesson learned seems like an ironic echo completely hallowed out as a necessity on the level of a public relations job.

This all seems born out of Panama and Frank's hatred of genre convention as they use the already tired put upon father story to tear apart the fabric of society. In many ways this feels like a predecessor to the melodrama's of the '50s with the suburban dream being revealed to be just an excuse to ignore the dissatisfaction of modern living and the emptiness of the traditional family unit in the context of western values of liberty and freedom. This provides a bit of an in real time anthropological lesson of how changes in technology allowed for this white flight to dream lands. The movie is very much about the invention of the bridge and tunnel crowd, an idea which would have been impractical even 30 years earlier, with technology as the tool for escapism. In the context of the film the motor engine, of car and train, seems like the cotton gin for allowing an escape from reality.

That's not to say I think there's a racial dimension to the film in its satire. Rather that what it is satirizing and how goes a long way to explaining the racial realities that the '50s would have to deal with. The feeling of the film isn't just one of emasculating Grant, but the resulting socio-political dimensions are a detailed emasculation of the coming era in American life for a certain class of men.

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Re: The Cary Grant List

#117 Post by bottlesofsmoke » Wed Mar 03, 2021 11:53 am

Starting this, I’ve seen 41 Grant movies, roughly fifteen of which would for sure make my list.

That Touch of Mink
This one left almost no impression on me, it’s about as run-of-the-mill a Doris Day 60s comedy as you’ll find, with all the modest strengths and weaknesses you’d might expect. I’ve seen most, (if not all?) of her other comedies from this era and while this isn’t the worst, it’s far from the best either. It’s clearly trying to replicate the success of her pairings with Rock Hudson, with Grant as the Hudson playboy, Doris still the world’s oldest virgin, and Gig Young as the Tony Randall comic relief. I’m not a very big fan of Doris Day, especially outside of musicals, but I really like her three movies with Hudson and Randall, mostly because of them rather than her. The attempts to fit Grant (who seems bored) and Young (who seems superfluous) into those roles doesn’t really work for me. I didn’t feel like their was much chemistry - either romantic or comedic - between Grant and Day, while the Gig Young side plot felt like something out of another movie and really served no purpose but to fill up runtime and provide a few questionable laughs.

Ladies Should Listen
Watching Grant was the most interesting part of this for me, though there were a few funny jokes outside of the sub-vaudevillian attempts at wordplay. This sort of seemed like Grant in transition, with a few moments that presaged his prime, but overall not quite there. He still seemed stiff at times, lacking the the spontaneity of his later performances. For example when Suzy falls on him early in the film, he just stands there. Prime Grant, even if he didn’t say anything, would have had some sort of a physical reaction, however slight, that would have made the whole scene funnier.
He also hasn’t quite learned to slow down his words and reactions or draw them out yet, the timing is off. If you compare him to Edward Everett Horton, who had already mastered milking every second, you can see the big difference. Perhaps it isn’t surpassing that it took an old school comedy director like Leo McCarey to help Grant really find his footing. It’s also interesting to see him in moments when his character is a little colder, he doesn’t quite have the even-if-I’m-insulting-you-I’m-charming-charm yet.

Big Brown Eyes
I liked this one in spite of (or perhaps because of) it being so all over the place in genre and tone. It really runs the gamut of typically thirties films, with romantic comedy, snappy dialogue, fast-edited interludes, gangsters, newspaper reporters, and dizzy society dames. The ability of Bennett’s charter to easily go from job to job was also funny in the context of the depression. Even more bizarre are the jumps from jokes to dead babies and romantic mixups to murder. After seeing so many of these thirties crime-comedies, just having something different, even if it’s weird and doesn’t always work, at least kept me engaged.
With Walsh, I think you can see when he’s interested or not, and it seemed he was invested in the crime more than the romantic comedy, with the killing of Lloyd Nolan’s character especially well done, with a cold, noir-esque underplaying and lack of emotion on the part of the killers. Nolan talks about flowers and percentages while the killers just blankly listen, eventually one shifts and then shoots from of screen (the shooter, I realized, is Henry Brandon, who’d play Scar in The Searchers) In an era when action scenes were often lacking in originality, this and some other things that come afterward, like the flowers on the body, stand out. Of course, it’s possible that these scenes were edited together this way to cover up a mistake or missing shots, but whether through inspiration or necessity, it worked for me, even if it just added to the overall strange tone of the movie.
I thought that Grant and Bennett were well paired, though I’d have liked for them to share more time on screen working the case together. Too often their time on screen together was a repetition of the same lines jealousy and denial, while most of their crime solving happened separately.
Grant as wise-cracking tough guy always reminds me of how Raymond Chandler said Grant was the ideal actor to play Philip Marlowe, though part of that might say more about anglophile Chandler and his identification with Marlowe than anything else. I do wonder what a hypothetical film with him as noir detective might be like. I’m not sure how well he’d do as as such terse character who internalizes his emotions, but it would certainly be interesting to see.

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Re: The Cary Grant List

#118 Post by knives » Wed Mar 03, 2021 1:25 pm

I actually thought Young was the highlight of the film and wish he had been the lead story.

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Re: The Cary Grant List

#119 Post by bottlesofsmoke » Wed Mar 03, 2021 2:15 pm

knives wrote:
Wed Mar 03, 2021 1:25 pm
I actually thought Young was the highlight of the film and wish he had been the lead story.
I can see that, he (and John Astin's sleezy Beasley) were definitely the most memorable parts of the film to me, even if I didn't really know what purpose Young served. He just didn't see to be very well integrated into the main story. You're right though, I think a movie about his love / hate relationship with Grant would have been much more interesting than what we got. But I guess this is really more of a Doris Day movie than a Cary Grant one.

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Re: The Cary Grant List

#120 Post by knives » Wed Mar 03, 2021 2:43 pm

Astin was great as well as a sort of pseudo McPoyle, but I think the movie included him just enough to make him not grating.

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Re: The Cary Grant List

#121 Post by knives » Wed Mar 03, 2021 3:59 pm

I’ve also been working through the Paramount set to greater success then I expected. I suppose Devil and the Deep is another notch in the tree that importance is not dictated by quality nor influence. This anonymous prize seems an introduction, in one case literally, for at least two stars and the close of the stardom or a third. It’s also a fairly early job for Charles Lang who would of course come to be a definer of Hollywood style.

The film proper is a relative historical blip done in the style of von Sternberg without the audacity save for Cooper’s amazing introduction which could have been taken direct from Morocco although that highlights this film’s difference. The Dietrich cycle started from the male perspective and only over time did it allow for Dietrich to be the eyes and ears of the movies. Bankhead here already commands the audience and offers a character defined by character rather than the male gaze. Von Sternberg had already made this leap, but it shows the intelligence of the knockoff that it is so aware and willing to use the power of its heroine’s voice.

I was doubtful of these early Grant’s, but if gems like this continue to appear this venture will have been worthwhile after all.

I had to follow it up with the real deal though. Any excuse to watch Blonde Venus I’ll take as it’s an easy top ten for me being the perfect example on multiple levels of the range of male and female dynamics. For this write up I’ll try to challenge myself to exclusively talk about Grant in his first major role as something like the Grant character though no promises.

It’s interesting how the question of who is Cary Grant already hangs heavy in this film. He gets a great introduction leading with his voice waking up the scene and slowly is he embodied from there till Dietrich can cast her gaze upon him as this handsome enigma. Is he good news, bad? Who knows but at least he gives a carnal opportunity. Even in his most leading roles Grant has this mystery to him that prevents knowing him and makes the fun of the ride so valuable as perhaps that is all he will ever allow the audience.

It’s a pretty straight line from here to the Hitchcock films with Suspicion as the obvious point of connection although I think North by Northwest is more interesting to consider. That role was originally intended for James Stewart, a radically different star, who would have inevitably brought more eeriness to the role given his split between sweet demeanor and heavy shoulders. We can know Stewart. Grant on the other hand raises the danger because even when his innocence is spelled out finely there’s always this question of why this man (I feel like had it been earlier Grant would have been the perfect casting for the Man with One Red Shoe).

Hopping back to Blonde Venus Grant is only present for a moment and largely he is a mere symbol though what that symbol is exactly is such a question because although he does become embodied he remains an ethereal figure for the audience and possibly Dietrich too considering how things play out.

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domino harvey
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Re: The Cary Grant List

#122 Post by domino harvey » Fri Mar 05, 2021 6:16 pm

senseabove wrote:
Mon Jan 25, 2021 11:18 pm
I'm No Angel is definitely better than She Done Him Wrong, though having seen the latter in a theater and the former on my couch, I think these films benefit from audience camaraderie a lot.
I'm not sure I would go so far as recommending it to anyone but I was pleasantly surprised by I'm No Angel and agree it's better than She Done Him Wrong (some small praise!), though it surely benefited from me going in with the lowest of expectations. I ended up engaging with it more as an anthropological relic than a film, though-- somehow there was an era in which these lame come-ons and drawn out patter were considered the height of sexy, what a world we live in! Watching a film extolling at length the sensual virtues of Mae West is a bit like sitting through a PornHub video for a fetish I don't have, but I could appreciate how every facet of the film was molded to accentuate West's star image, even if I don't even remotely find it appealing. I suspect her title card credit for the story and dialogue is just studio system malarky talking up the fact that she wrote her own one liners, but it's highly unusual to see a Hollywood star from this era credited with writing their own script, so that's something. I'm not sure if the scenes of West catting it up with her coterie of black maids are progressive or not, but they're still another point of differentiation here. Grant is such a non-factor in this movie that it seems pointless to even consider him or this film for this list even if you anyone loved this with all their heart, though!

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Re: The Cary Grant List

#123 Post by knives » Fri Mar 05, 2021 6:22 pm

She actually was a major factor in writing her films and if anything I wouldn’t be surprised if the credit was underplaying her contributions.

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Re: The Cary Grant List

#124 Post by Rayon Vert » Fri Mar 05, 2021 11:12 pm

Madame Butterfly (Gering 1932). Pretty lifeless adaptation of the play, despite all of Sylvia Sidney’s hammy efforts - overall a dull, one-note weepie. Grant plays the male lead but his character is quite the empty shell, and there’s nothing really in his performance to commend.

She Done Him Wrong (Sherman 1933). I definitely agree that I’m No Angel is the better film. I don’t mind Mae West, though. Not much of a story here but in addition to the one-liners it’s all about the rough characters, atmosphere and blues tunes.

Walk, Don’t Run
(Walters 1966).
therewillbeblus wrote:
Mon Jan 25, 2021 8:44 pm
I also watched Walk Don't Run, Grant's last perf, and boy did it stink. I can appreciate the idea to remake The More the Merrier with the twist of Grant playing Coburn's part, and Grant's definitely exuding some admirable energy here, but there are just so many gags that fail due to the comic timing of everyone else involved. Hutton's awful and ruins every scene he's in, but Walters himself could have choreographed the bits better with anything but lazy direction. It's a shame to see Grant enjoying himself without an ounce of support to make a mildly-decent movie out of this mess.
That’s a much too harsh assessment for my taste. It is a strange film, however, as for quite a while I was bewildered about the behavior of Grant’s, then Hutton’s characters, until I clued in on the fact that this it like an out-of-time absurdist screwball. The problem being, though, that there’s almost nothing at stake for the first hour (in a much too-long film for this genre, reminding me of those over-lengthy late Wilder comedies), just the (most often not very funny) apartment-sharing non-problems between these three roommates. On the other hand, even in that first half it’s nice to see Grant go out on a piece where he’s engaging in physical comedy and still comes across as vital. But once the film breaks out of that situation and setting, and as the romantic plot developed between Eggar and Hutton, I thought it suddenly exuded quite a bit of charm. That paralleled the film breaking out into more exterior scenes of 1964 Olympic Tokyo, which gives the film a special flavor. Much too flawed to be considered a good film, but one I ended up enjoying, much to my surprise.

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therewillbeblus
Joined: Tue Dec 22, 2015 3:40 pm

Re: The Cary Grant List

#125 Post by therewillbeblus » Fri Mar 05, 2021 11:33 pm

Yeah I get what it was going for, just too sloppy for me (and I'm no stranger to enjoying a film because its sloppiness is fitting or risky). Ultimately the moments I smiled at were undercut by being done a hundred times better in The More the Merrier, which was a hundred times a better film than this, and more or less a copycat remake (for the strong gags at least). I wasn't trying to be harsh, Grant is doing his best and having a blast at it, but once Hutton entered the movie any potential just deflated and the ensuing narrative felt endlessly drawn out. This might boil down to a personal peeve, but these days I have far less patience for -and am quicker to resent- films that just drag, compared to those that might be aggressively 'off' but can at least be interesting in the process of failing.

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