The Cary Grant List

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

#126 Post by Rayon Vert » Fri Mar 05, 2021 11:42 pm

Like Domino with I'm No Angel, I'm going in with the later (post-LSD!) Grants with very low expectations, so that'll possibly reflect in my overgenerous takes.

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Re: The Cary Grant List

#127 Post by therewillbeblus » Fri Mar 05, 2021 11:50 pm

That's a good idea. We agree on Madame Butterfly though- you almost have to try to adapt that play this poorly!

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Re: The Cary Grant List

#128 Post by domino harvey » Sat Mar 06, 2021 12:50 am

Thirty-Day Princess squanders its City Mouse/Country Mouse variation on a not very amusing script, co-written by Preston Sturges (we'll be generous and say the scant few chuckles came from him), and just about everyone in this but Edward Arnold seems miscast, including Grant. Beyond the floundering leads, I found the supporting players in this remarkably unappealing, especially an older newspaper manager goading Grant and a truly abysmal lisping fiance. I went into this with a lot of good will and the movie ate it up quicker than Sylvia Sidney at an automat

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Re: The Cary Grant List

#129 Post by Rayon Vert » Sun Mar 07, 2021 1:34 pm

The Talk of the Town (Stevens 1942). (revisit) I gave this another chance given the opposing opinions earlier and I was surprised to discover I didn’t find it nearly as problematic this time. Especially in terms of the blending of genres, and in contrast to earlier statements, the end result didn’t appear to me to be that incongruous; apart from the opening scene that threatened a serious thriller, the rest of it cohered into something like a Capra message com-dram. Grant is strong (man does he look good during this period) but his role here is more like the third wheel that he plays in The Philadelphia Story. Ultimately, though, whether as romantic comedy or message movie, it didn’t enchant me, but it was engaging enough and a nice showcase for the actors involved.


The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer
(Reis 1947). The wrong man and the law again. (With Loy as Judge Turner going through the same rationalist thawing-out process as Professor Lightcap. Lightcap: If feelings influenced law, half the country would be in jail. Facts. Turner: I don't deal in emotions, but in facts.) Such an unambitious, simple film by comparison, but a real delight. The premise of Grant’s character being sentenced to date a teenager is already fun but the script is humorous for the whole ride. It’s also full of great broad comedy moments for Cary (you gotta love the picnic races). Shirley Temple is a lot of fun too.

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Re: The Cary Grant List

#130 Post by therewillbeblus » Mon Mar 08, 2021 7:57 pm

knives wrote:
Wed Mar 03, 2021 3:59 pm
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.
I revisited Blonde Venus again and feel similarly to you about how Grant's enigmatic presence is used here to an advantage. At first he seems to be a bullheaded jerk who provokes an affair with the same cheap carelessness as his opening sucker punch, reflecting the oily superficial personality of the nightclub life Dietrich seems to be 'regressing' to... but then we are given symptoms of something greater, acts of empathetic invitation hidden behind a cool uninviting disposition. His re-emergence late in the story embodies unconditional forgiveness despite all the red flags of defiling social norms the object of his affections is exuding, and this confident position refracts our own alignment with the two central characters just enough to sober us up to the missing spiritual principle of human intimacy. Until his guardian-angel-esque return, we've been engaged in a push-pull between his bruised emotional retaliation born from resentment, and her self-preservation via stone-gripped parenting, sacrificing wellbeing in child neglect due to threats to her selfish love. Grant serves as a grey complex variable that ironically as an outsider resembles the ethos of Christian forgiveness necessary in marital trust to stand these tribulations.

His force had two strong effects on me: First, by becoming a third-wheel of morality incarnate, instead of the dirty cheater playboy he appears to be, his existence refuses to give Dietrich and Marshall a black-and-white simplified narrative and prompts them to reflect on their own character defects that widened the divide between them. Secondly, by subverting expectations on his own character, whom we initially identified as characteristically in step with the surface-level disgust of the nightclub life, there is a subtle twist on the reading of this preconceived 'regression' Dietrich had taken, which was filtered through Marshall's (and the era's) insular patriarchal lens. Grant, standing in for the vibe of these spaces, makes us wonder if Dietrich returning to the nightclubs and breaking social norms was actually the right thing to do- and that Marshall's judgments and rigid gender role control have worked with intensely unnatural friction against Dietrich's reliable milieu, where she can self-actualize and access a part of herself to be valuable to others, including her husband. Grant opens up these avenues of exploration, allowing a challenge to constructs that would otherwise be viewed as irritating barriers in a lesser film, and here are questioned rightly as supports with merit in opportunities invisible to the narrow-minded, and perhaps even safe havens for women like Dietrich who deserve to live beyond the small apartment walls, motherly role, and suppressed identity; to move through, and see, the world as she once did in the springs of Germany- the memory both partners tellingly return to as a time that was happiest for both of them, when they cohabitated on equal ground of respect and possibility.

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Re: The Cary Grant List

#131 Post by knives » Wed Mar 10, 2021 4:30 pm

Beginning to suspect I’m about to hit a dry spell as I’ve been even less enthused than many here for these early Grant’s. First though I should focus on the good and boy is This is the Night ever one even with my reservations. A Rene Clair inspired opening is the high point of this film which never seems able to drop the other shoe and slip into a higher quality film although there are sequences that succeed at that comedic musicality such as the one at the train station.

The film really succeeds by its actors. Young and Grant do the best with their material making sure the film never becomes less than a baseline entertainment. Young in particular is really brilliant here playing this sort of cruel impotency I find very amusing. Mix that with the utter madness of Chou-Chou and I’m a happy man.

Far less successful for me was Hot Saturday which I’m already beginning to forget. It’s a lukewarm effort that sees the studio further experimenting with how to use Grant as he plays a kindly small town guy that plays the lead in a B-story romance after his role in the A-story is retired. Not that the A story here carries much interest beyond a tone deaf rape. This is exactly the kind of doesn’t know what to do so does everything film that makes me often exhausted by pre-code cinema.

I also rewatched the two West films but they don’t count as entertainments.

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Re: The Cary Grant List

#132 Post by domino harvey » Wed Mar 10, 2021 11:02 pm

Matt wrote:
Tue Jan 26, 2021 12:20 am
It’s equal parts amusing and excruciating to watch you all torture yourselves with Cary Grant’s worst movies. Doing career surveys really can test the limits of affection for the subject. But I do hope you will all carve out 78 minutes for Kiss and Make-Up, a romantic comedy every bit as frivolous, broad, and silly as its 1934 vintage would lead you to expect, but for me the one where Cary Grant begins to solidify his unique comedic persona. It’s usually Topper that gets this designation, but I think that might be because this film was out of circulation for so long (making its home video debut only in 2006), whereas Topper achieved public domain ubiquity on video and TV. (Pauline Kael mentions Kiss favorably in her big piece on Grant, but I imagine she saw an archival print somewhere as part of her research.) I’ll have to do a rewatch before I post any further thoughts on it—it’s on YouTube or in the various Universal Grant DVD collections. It’s no Twentieth Century or It Happened One Night, but I think it can respectably claim to be a part of the flowering of screwball comedy in 1934.
I liked Kiss and Make-Up a lot too, though looking at the lot of you that I follow on LB, we're alone in this opinion! But it's a dynamically directed bit of silliness, and I especially enjoyed the early passages with Grant's heartthrob plastic surgeon navigating his charges. I think the film errs in making the romance between Edward Everett Horton and Helen Mack too plausible and cute, which renders the inevitable switch at the end of the film rather needlessly cruel. As mentioned elsewhere in the thread, the song Mack and Horton share serenading corned beef and cabbage is the highlight of what might technically be considered a musical!

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Re: The Cary Grant List

#133 Post by Rayon Vert » Thu Mar 11, 2021 11:18 pm

Sylvia Scarlett (Cukor 1935). (revisit) The eccentricity of this film doesn’t seem to derive as much from the notorious gender-bending (itself sharing the limelight with a fair amount of class antagonism) as to how far the picaresque dimension is taken. We’re not just going from one episode to another, but in a progressively more fragmented way, with little narrative connective tissue left by the end. I can understand the hangout perspective, although it’s a bit too constantly on the move for me to see it that way myself. The slightly depressing dispersal of these caravan performers near the end reminds me a bit of Sawdust and Tinsel. I don’t dislike the characters like Domino does, but in the end it’s not the most satisfying film even if I enjoy the crazy ride most of the time. I haven’t yet seen most of his films leading up to this, but it feels Grant has really arrived at this point, as his energetic performance, with seems to trade in on his vaudeville experience, yields a lot of charm and magnetism, despite the limitations of the character.


The Woman Accused
(Sloane 1933). A bit of a Hitchcock vibe here at times but instead of a wrong man it’s the right woman who did it for a noble reason, and of course trying to hide it. Basically another Nancy Carroll vehicle with not much for Grant to seek his teeth into in terms of his role, except at the very end in the surprising scene TW referenced where he comes off as a violent Batman-type superhero. Really a strange film, with some parts of the script, acting and direction that that skirt awfulness, but it’s still much more entertaining than Madame Butterfly. I don’t know if others here have noticed that in these early Grant pictures he’s always wearing heavy eye shadow, but also here and at least in another earlier picture some obvious lipstick as well.


The Eagle and the Hawk
(Walker & Leisen 1933). A little derivative of Hawks’ The Dawn Patrol but in this case the existentialism is married to a striking anti-war stance. Not a perfect film by any means but it has power, especially in the depiction of Fredric March’s downward mental spiral. That interlude with Carole Lombard as an erotic angel dropping out of nowhere during his character’s leave in London is quite odd, but poetic. Grant’s performance is competent but more notable for being opposite to his usual obliging persona.

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Re: The Cary Grant List

#134 Post by senseabove » Fri Mar 12, 2021 12:17 am

Rayon Vert wrote:
Thu Mar 11, 2021 11:18 pm
The Eagle and the Hawk (Walker & Leisen 1933). ... That interlude with Carole Lombard as an erotic angel dropping out of nowhere during his character’s leave in London is quite odd, but poetic. ...
FWIW, Leisen described a part of her scene that was cut when the film was rereleased, as well as a modified ending. It isn’t a world-changing cut, but it does feel like it change the tone of her cameo, and I imagine there could be more that Leisen doesn’t detail in that interview.

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Re: The Cary Grant List

#135 Post by Rayon Vert » Sat Mar 13, 2021 11:53 pm

Night and Day (Curtiz 1946). What a lifeless contrast with the director’s earlier Yankee Doodle Dandy. The script was ill-conceived, as the most that seems to happen as we watch Cole Porter climb the rungs of his professional ladder is his wife being upset because he’s too busy. The songs that punctuate the story are just showcases of the different musicals he wrote and don’t relate at all to the (non)-story. Except a few dance steps, there’s nothing memorable about the numbers, and Grant himself is pretty spiritless. A real dud.


The Bishop’s Wife (Koster 1947). (revisit) Giving this a second shot after being disappointed with it during the 40s list project. I liked it a bit more, not finding it quite as flat this time and seeing more the subtleties of what’s at stake dramatically, but I can’t say it evokes emotion for me at any point. I’m clearly in the minority here but having just gone through Eyman’s bio I feel a little validated reading him characterizing it as “slightly underwhelming” (he also isn’t very hot on Grant’s performance in it, who apparently wanted to play the role of the bishop).

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Re: The Cary Grant List

#136 Post by therewillbeblus » Sun Mar 14, 2021 12:12 am

Glad to be validated on my hatred for Night and Day, and "lifeless" is an apt descriptor

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Re: The Cary Grant List

#137 Post by Rayon Vert » Sun Mar 14, 2021 10:04 pm

Enter Madame! (Nugent 1935). Night and Day with the shoe on the other foot: Grant playing the husband who feels abandoned by his wife the opera singer touring the world. This was ghastly. A quasi-screwball with no real jokes (which shows that Charles Brackett having a screenplay credit is no guarantee), and the behavior of the actors throughout fails to elicit a single smile. Elissa Landi is laboriously off-putting as the histrionic singer. And as for Grant, this is a remarriage comedy very much in the mold and tone of The Awful Truth two years down the line, but it’s striking by contrast how charmlessly pedestrian and uninteresting his performance here is. Not that long of a film but it was very hard to get through.

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Re: The Cary Grant List

#138 Post by bottlesofsmoke » Mon Mar 15, 2021 8:39 pm

I’ve been watching/rewatching Grant’s four films with Stanley Donen. As others have mentioned, the three non-Charade films are a type of film - adapted stage play in widescreen, long scenes of people talking - that I’m not particularly fond of. Indiscreet I had seen before but didn’t remember much, the main enjoyment to me from the film was the way Grant’s character deceives himself in order to preserve the illusion that he is a bachelor man of the world that shies away from commitments. It seemed completely obvious to me that he was in love with Bergman’s character and only wants to be with her, you can see it in the scenes where he gets jealous. And yet, to keep his masculine independence, he goes through elaborate deceptions, first of Bergman then of himself before resigning to the obvious. I didn’t love the movie by any means, but that part at least felt like an interesting take on the romantic comedy and fear of commitment.

The Grass is Greener left less of an impression, though I enjoyed Grant playing against type, Simmons, and Moray Watson. It seemed to me that the main problem was the relationship between Mitchum and Kerr was never very believable, as others have said. I think the idea is that Grant is so committed to his duty, a buttoned-up Brit lacking passion, that the loose, freewheeling American is ripe to steal his wife. I could maybe see Mitchum playing that role (though honestly he makes more sense for the Grant role, in a version set on a ranch in Texas), even if someone more passionate would be better, but I never felt the screenplay drove home the contrast between the two men enough to make Kerr’s infatuation believable. Like Indiscreet I think this might be one of those movies that fades from my memory as time passes.

I liked Kiss Them For Me the best of these three, it was much funnier and Grant gives a startlingly good and unexpected performance. His transition to carefree joker to anger and pain was impressive; it’s hard to think of another actor who could do the “dead native boy scene” and make it work as well as Grant does.
Having seen many wartime forties films, it was refreshing to see a different take on service and heroism, even if it’s no Hail the Conquering Hero, though both compare how the public views heroes vs. how they view themselves. I also liked the idea that heroes became a commodity during the war, something that the military needed to manufacture to sell war bonds, encourage factory workers, raise morale, etc. It sort of reminded me of I’ll Be Seeing You, where Joseph Cotten and Ginger Rogers feel out of step because they can’t fill their “roles” in wartime society, he as a “hero,” she as a morale booster. It’s a side of “total war” and a country refashioned for a singular cause that you don’t often consider.
I am curious why this movie had such a low IMDB score at 5.7, which is terrible for a Grant film. If you’re wondering, the worst scored Grant films are:
Kiss Them For Me 5.7
The Pride and the Passion 5.8
Enter Madame 5.7
The first two I get, but this one seems at least better than such an uncommonly low score.

It’s hard, if not impossible, for me to be objective about Charade, since it was a yearly tradition for my family to watch it (and North by Northwest) every New Year’s Eve, long before I had any idea who Stanley Donen was. I can honestly watch it anytime, no hesitation. Much of my love for the film is of a purely sensuous nature: the opening credits, the music, the colors, Paris locations, and my gawd Audrey Hepburn’s costumes. If only I could smell the liverwurst and taste the peppermint flavored heroin. But there is more to it than that, I think. There is a real sense of fun in this film that comes from everyone involved, who seem like they are having a blast, especially Grant, who gets to enact the charade and put on all different kinds of masks throughout the film, playing all sides and all roles.
He really is, in this and NbNW, I think the greatest action star in movie history, not just because he’s cool and suave, but because he can be faced with a situation like when Scobie threatens to shoot him with the gun in his coat pocket and Grant respond by mockingly saying “you’ll wreck your raincoat” to totally deflate and infuriate him, as if he was more concerned with the welfare of a coat than any threat Scobie might present.
And then there are guys like James Coburn who gets to ham it up (“you fell for her like an egg from a tall chicken” is a line my family loves to repeat). I know this gets compared to Hitchcock a lot, (and for mostly good reason) but I think it’s funnier than any Hitchcock film, and I say that as someone who thinks many of his films are very funny. It walks a fine line with its bad guys, who alternate from comic relief to legitimately threatening, while mixing a fun overall tone with some fairly dark humor, joking about some pretty brutal murders. The whole movie feels like one big joke, nothing is ever as it seems, but it also doesn’t seem like a spoof in anyway. I guess you accuse it of being lightweight entertainment, though I would disagree, but there are few more enjoyable movie watching experiences out there. This, North By Northwest, and To Catch a Thief make a pretty impeachable trilogy of pure shots of cinematic pleasure.

Count me as another who thinks Night and Day is dreadful (and I love Cole Porter’s music) and that prefers I’m No Angel to She Done Him Wrong though Mae West has always seemed like basketball player who can put together a great mixtape of highlights (one liners) but in reality isn’t a good player. Her movies have isolated funny moments but can be hard to take as a whole, even the best ones.

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Re: The Cary Grant List

#139 Post by therewillbeblus » Mon Mar 15, 2021 9:29 pm

Nice appreciation of Charade, which I also used to watch pretty compulsively, though revisits have revealed to me that Grant isn’t doing quite as much as I once thought. His function seems to be flexing his enigmatic presence for us as spectators, and we have a terrific heroine in Hepburn to align with comfortably to study him as the non-lead for a change. I like to think of a gender swap going on in the Grant/EMS roles from NbN but Donen keeps the tone at such a casual tempo that death, flirtation, mystery, erratic scenery-chewing baddie perfs, screwball-lite comedy, and pretty setpieces all fire the same tranquilized neurons and the film never tries to engage with us like the Hitch- a wise choice that allows it to be its own separate entity rather than a watered-down copycat. I still find the running joke of correcting terms “spy” and “agent” to be a delight.

Kiss Them For Me didn’t leave me as high as some here, but it’s still one of Grant’s best films and best perfs and should easily make any list going to 20.

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Re: The Cary Grant List

#140 Post by knives » Tue Mar 16, 2021 4:52 pm

Madame Butterfly
I know wrong type of Asian, but Sidney’s terrible miscasting is such an iceberg for the film that I instantly wished Anna May Wong played the lead instead. She was always on the Paramount lot anyway and would have brought some much needed strength to the rôle to make it more than a colonialist Mizoguchi predecessor. Sidney also really leans into the infantilism of the script making the last act basically impossible to watch as she makes a cartoon of the situation. A performer willing to make this character intelligent would have succeeded in many places where the movie currently falters such as in the coy robin dialogue which if played differently I think would be salvageable.

It is fun though that finally in this Cary Grant project I’m actually watching the man in a more prominent placement. It also seems he finally found his place on the lot playing aloof sources of tragedy for prostitutes. It’s not the most pleasant role, but it definitely fits the era.

I should say I actually like this one despite wishing someone else was in the lead. It’s a beautiful film with a disdainful eye on the cavalier attitude of the Americans which I found to be rather mature. It really gets to the heart of tragedy the inevitable fate Sidney finds herself in and it leads one, at least today, to hate Grant early on.

The Woman Accused
This is just a plain weird one wherein a scene from a Kenneth Anger film isn’t the strangest business. I’d put money on the kangaroo court as the highlight, but m y, there does seem to be a lot of rape in these early Paramount films. At least this time the rapist is Louis Calhern who could act any plot development into something worth while.

Perhaps the most notable thing here is the varied tone of the film with scenes divorced from each other supposedly because of an excessive number of writers whose contributions were largely left to individual scenes. It’s also interesting for, as I saw one reviewer allude to, how the basic plot shows the ways that the code will make law and justice one shifting the moral plane of America. Unquestionably our woman is rightly accused so by the upcoming logic should be imprisoned, but as the film outlines she deserves sympathy and respect. After all, her fear of rape was a legitimate one. The right for moral confusion is one that would soon be taken away and even once the law loosened her hands the art of confusion has remained lost. Also I guess Cary Grant is in this.

The Eagle and the Hawk
This has the feel of a Hawks film which should be no surprise since at least the writer’s room is the same Hawks was using at the time. This big difference is how individualistic this film is where it is the March show and others be damned if you think you’ll be important. Even Grant’s prominent and unusual role is there to serve a source of introspection for March. Nonetheless it is a fascinating role of a species I’m not aware of Grant repeating elsewhere. Typical for the period he’s decidedly in support, but in order to play the company villain always at March’s neck and posing an alternative fashion to live by oneself. Rather then the familiar enigma he’s an open book of brash rationalization. The way Grant handles this new suit is unsuccessful, but in a fashion which speaks to his qualities as an actor. He’s like a scared kid trying to play at this character. There’s a disconnect which speaks to where he was in his career and elevates the role as well which is good because it never amounts to more than a generic WWI feature.

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Re: The Cary Grant List

#141 Post by Rayon Vert » Thu Mar 18, 2021 10:15 pm

Gambling Ship (Gasnier & Marcin 1933). It’s nothing remarkable but I liked this one and it definitely stands out among the better ones in the early output. Grant as the gangster deciding to shed the criminal life and falling in love with a lady on the train who’s also hiding skeletons has something meet-cute screwball about it that works. The rest mixes drama, action and romance in a way that’s pretty entertaining on the whole. I don’t know if it’s the grey coloring on the side of his hair (?) that’s part of it but Grant here looks and performs a bit more like the more seasoned actor we get to know later.


Thirty Day Princess
(Gering 1934). Pretty radically different experience for me in contrast to Domino. I was also assuming this was the result of Sturges’ touch, but I found this both amusing and charming on the whole. There’s a Ruritanian vibe, but yeah that automat scene prefigures the one Sturges writes later for Easy Living (which also has Edward Arnold). I thought Sidney was very good here, but Grant’s character as written is insufficiently individualized.

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Re: The Cary Grant List

#142 Post by knives » Thu Mar 18, 2021 10:52 pm

I also watched the Gasnier and felt similarly while having a minor blast with it. I was thinking the whole time finally a Cary Grant film which feels like a Cary Grant movie. The scenes on the train for instance are basically a dry run for The Awful Truth. Things are still rough around the edges and you can really tell he needed someone to teach him how to be a star, but you could easily have made the same basic fill during his peak.

Grant himself is the odd duck playing a gangster who you really can believe has killed people. Alternatively his romantic scenes are too masculine and full of effort. I want to see Cary Grant as a gangster with a heart of gold and not Archie Leach as such.

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Re: The Cary Grant List

#143 Post by knives » Fri Mar 19, 2021 6:09 pm

A nice accident of this project is better familiarizing myself with some of the great character actors of the period. For example I never even noticed Jack La Rue before and now I’ll never forget him and his Bobby Cannavale mug.

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Re: The Cary Grant List

#144 Post by Rayon Vert » Fri Mar 19, 2021 10:10 pm

Same here. I've also been enjoying the ladies I hadn't seen before, and quite liked Benita Hume in that one.

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Re: The Cary Grant List

#145 Post by Rayon Vert » Sat Mar 20, 2021 11:04 pm

Father Goose (Nelson 1964). I liked this quite a bit, despite having similar feelings others have expressed that it’s at the level of comfort food (twbb) and that the romance isn’t sizzling (Shrew). Fun setting with nice, pretty location shooting, a humorous-enough script for my taste, and plenty of light-hearted charm. The film relies on a lot of elements so that the romance lacking a bit of chemistry doesn’t really hurt it that much. I definitely get a kick out of Grant in misanthropic mode and there’s a slew of classic Cary Grant reaction shots to enjoy. I guess I’ll be hunting down the Signature edition after all.


Kiss Them for Me (Donen 1957). I wasn’t planning on watching this one precisely because of the IMDB score. I gave it a chance because of the comments here and the director, but unfortunately I’m pretty much in agreement with the rating. The plot is barely existent and it’s hard to get interested in any of the narrative. Neither did anything strike me as humorous; it was pretty much a steady flow of dullness. And I’m also not seeing anything special in Grant’s work here either. (And boy is Mansfield and her character repellent). Still better than Enter Madame though!


None but the Lonely Heart (Odets 1944). An outlier for the actor who steps outside his Cary Grant persona, playing a Cockney East Ender in a moody, quasi kitchen-sink realism piece. It’s a noteworthy (and Oscar-nominated) performance, but the film is only half-successful. Some good scenes throughout, and some atmospheric photography, but it meanders quite a bit and doesn’t have the required narrative focus. It would have needed some tightening up, and maybe a director with a more properly cinematic hand. Still interesting and deserving of a watch.

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Re: The Cary Grant List

#146 Post by senseabove » Sun Mar 21, 2021 12:13 am

I also just watched Kiss Them For Me after the upthread praise and landed somewhere between the boosters and RV. While I do think this is an enjoyable iteration of Grant's Manic Pixie Dream Daddy persona and found it generally enjoyable enough, the waffling-principles runaround drags and Grant has no good scene partners to spar with in the meantime. Comparing with the other lesser Donens, it probably averages better on general laughs than Grass, but there's nothing like the fireworks between Grant and Simmons, and Indiscreet is still the winner for me for being completely pure, fluffy guff and unashamed of it. (Charade I still need to revisit for this project, but presumably it's still very safely the front runner among the Donens.)

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Re: The Cary Grant List

#147 Post by knives » Sun Mar 21, 2021 3:23 pm

Sinners in the Sun
I suppose I’m the lone madman who actually enjoyed this and it only gets better for me the longer it stews. Admittedly, I’m a bit of a sucker for what this is selling as star crossed lovers making themselves worse for their pretensions is a story type I adore. Our leads start off okay and end up pretty unredeemable in their own eyes. What’s interesting is how beloved they remain for the camera. The love goes from hope to pity, but it is love all the same.

The story and the camera arguing is probably the source of a lot of the troubles many have here. The story isn’t really one that affords redemption which comes across like a three second joke at the end, yet there is a clear and desperate desire for the film to end itself that way. I’m left thinking of Dwan’s sweethearted Manhandled in connection to this film. It has many similar themes, but knows how to make the varied instruments work in tune earning an ending which could have wrong headed class overtones in the wrong hands. Hall’s hands aren’t helped as the male lead isn’t up to the challenge with his scenes lagging next to Lombard’s salacious sympathy. A film focusing exclusively on her journey would have likely been stronger.

Wings in the Dark
Admittedly I’m jumping two years ahead, but it’s clear Grant was almost finished defining his mojo by this point. He drops the weird makeup, acts naturally, and is actually able to lift the material into something enjoyable even when the film is as generic as this.

The movie itself attempts to save itself from being just another Lindbergh romance by turning into a blindness melodrama. Both stories are a dime a dozen in the period with this only offering the fantastic chemistry of Loy and Grant as something to remember it by. Loy in particular is a dream playing things loose and fast like an action hero version of her Libeled Lady character. She single handedly makes the film worth watching.

Grant alternatively shows what a reactive actor he is. Later on it could show up as passivity or even a disconnect from the material, but he really is here to match the energy of the rest of cast embodying their strengths and weaknesses like a mirror with a fun accent.

The Last Outpost
This was an incredibly weird experience. The Kurds are passion of mine and so I was inevitably going to have a strong opinion about a film set amongst them. The degree they are acknowledged as their own people made this a hopeful delight. It just had me imaging a post-colonial period where the British weren’t complete idiots and gave them their own country rather than stupidly inventing Iraq.

Alas the film is never the one I would have wished for. Instead it served up one of the most racist films I’ve seen recently to the point where I could not even appreciate the fine cinematography nor the fact that this plays as a dry run for Gunga Din, a film whose value as entertainment does overcome its virulent racism.

There is a lot of what looks to be documentary footage mixed in which is exciting and good leading me to wonder how the film was made. The presence of four credited directors also makes me quite curious.

All those problems considered the first section of the film is exciting. While simplistic it could have made for a tense film ala The Lost Patrol. Instead the film tries for being plot filled which is okay, and far less racist, but not a real source of excitement. On this whole this is several good, if racist, films combined to make one mediocre film.

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Rayon Vert
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Re: The Cary Grant List

#148 Post by Rayon Vert » Thu Mar 25, 2021 9:45 pm

Room for One More (Taurog 1952). So how many films are there exactly of Grant with a load of kids? This felt like a public service announcement for fostering problem children (and for the Boy Scouts) - weirdly earnest, and painfully on-the-nose during the children-in-distress scenes. But it’s family fare with a good heart that’s well enough made if you’re into that. I did wind up warming up to it near the end - however it’s more cuteness and sentiment than comedy, and not something I’d care to see again. The jokes about Mr. Rose not getting any from the mother who’s completely concerned with the children get old quickly (and the way Drake’s character responds truly makes 1950s motherhood sound like the death of sex). Meanwhile Grant is perfectly adequate but the script isn’t really asking for much from him.


Kiss and Make-Up (Thompson 1934). I read the comments upthread but still wasn’t prepared for how batty this movie is. The script just takes one crazy turn after another, and eventually you get characters breaking out in song out of nowhere, and that silent-film slapstick chase for the finale. It’s a bit too slight for me to really fall for, but I still admired the energy and the oddness. I do agree with soundchaser that Grant was a bit wooden in the earlier parts of the film at least, but he got better as it went along. Not crazy about that vibrato in the singing though.


Ladies Should Listen (Tuttle 1934). Another trifle, but just a dreadful film by comparison, with the actors’ efforts powerless against the thin, humorless script. The lack of a score for most of it made the awkwardness of the whole thing stand out even more. I agree about this being Grant making strides but not quite getting there yet.

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Re: The Cary Grant List

#149 Post by Rayon Vert » Sun Mar 28, 2021 1:18 pm

Operation Petticoat (Edwards 1959). Not much in the way of actual laughs here but I still found myself amused with the situations and mise-en-scène. Again pleasing and charming in a light entertainment kind of way, which seems to have been Grant’s calling card in this last career stretch. When the women arrive onboard, it threatens to feel obnoxiously sexist at times, until you realize with the narrative developments that follow (including most pointedly the painting of the submarine) that the film is actually undercutting the machismo of war.


Indiscreet
(Donen 1958). This wasn’t very good at all. It takes about two thirds of the film to get into the crisis onto which the plot hangs, which provokes the comedy. Until then it’s this awkwardly dull romance between two characters without much depth to them, making you feel you’re supposed to just be in love with them because they’re the glamorous Grant and Bergman beautiful people, but they’re both past their prime so it doesn’t even work on that level. Grant especially comes off as unappealing because he’s just this one-dimensional earnest lover without a single note of his usual comicality (until the Scottish reel, which feels forced). When the film finally kicks into that rom-com drive, you finally see the point, but it’s such lightweight and disposable stuff. Frankly this is almost terrible.


That Touch of Mink (Mann 1962). Unless a drift of my attention was responsible, something felt underwritten in the way Grant’s character comes to suddenly have an interest in Day’s, seemingly out of nowhere - what his motives are for inviting her on this world trip are unexplained. And then precisely in that first Bermuda scene where his interest becomes apparent, things get strange and almost uncomfortable in the way he comes off as almost a sexual predator. This film doesn’t make a lot of sense in many ways and there’s too many bad gags to go along with the good ones, which is a shame since Day puts in a lot of energy in this one, and she quickly establishes a likeable character. A near-screwball pitched comedy that needed a better script, and a lot more quality control, e.g. those numerous awful process shots used for the simplest of surroundings.

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Re: The Cary Grant List

#150 Post by knives » Tue Mar 30, 2021 5:35 pm

Thirty Day Princess
Discovering Gering has certainly been one of the high points of this Grant-a-thon. He had done drama well, but he just knocks this comedy out of the park presenting a sort of flipped Lubitsch film where the Ruritanian culture is foisted to an American setting. I mean what kind of Lubitsch would have Edward Arnold as it’s MVP?

Ladies Should Listen
Well now I know a source to that one Klaus Nomi song. This is a really mad piece of run around madness with a ditzy Grant surrounded by mad women and an ever madder EE Horton.

Frances Drake really steals the show acting with this bizarre CT WASP accent that is totally out of place for her character and yet adds a sense of discipline to the surrounding cartoon characters, Grant is basically Pepe Lepew, running at a whole different temperature.

The writing is also genius with lots of great word play and creative visual gags. The movie does begin to run out of steam in the last ten minutes, the stuff with glasses lady is a good background gag, but the movie doesn’t work well as a dramatic vehicle and that as the primary dilemma isn’t as fun.

Kiss and Make-Up
I absolutely adored this as an exercise in bad taste and madness like John Waters using an old Cronenberg script. Whatever other thoughts there are to have this film daring to take such a congenial tone on such horrendous material for me is a unique delight.

It is compelling to look at Grant here who in his stiff almost asexual obliviousness seems to be giving an early version of his Bringing Up Baby performance if not character. I think it also works well to dispel the myth that McCarey made Grant a star as his character has followed a fairly linear progression up through ‘35 where he was pigeonheld in specific comedic and dramatic identities. These Paramount films, still got four left in the set, have proven threat worth both in the fun I’ve had and in how valuable they have proven for a historical understanding of their ‘star’, studio, and era.

Also EE Horton makes every film the greatest.

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