Yogi's Movie Consumption Blog

A housing shortage in Washington leads to a bizarre flat share of McCrea, Arthur and Coburn. The film is one of those romantic comedy prototypes. Which means you can guess the ending pretty early, the exchanges are witty and there is a big breakup somewhere in the middle. But with Coburn thrown into the mix the whole thing became way more unpredictable and for me way more enjoyable. The demeanor with which Coburn sets up the whole affair between McCrea and Arthur is just amazing. And I have to admit that I loved that little scene with the trousers. Totally silly, but in its harmless way a great deal of fun. There were a couple of other scenes like that, but this one just stuck to my mind. Some of the jokes are a little "stagey" - woman is in one room, man in the other, they meet in the hallway, walk back into their respective rooms, come out again, act surprised. This is run-of-the-mill fun, not very clever. But many other little visual jokes are. Like what happen...

The woman of a hapless inventor tries to divorce him, flees to California and gets picked up by a billionaire. There are a lot of really nice scenes in the film that felt like they posessed a light and innocent quality - although there were a lot of innuendos and hints at adultery in all directions. I especially loved the scenes in the beginning, the old sausage maker, the couple discussing their divorce and some of the slapstick scenes in the train. But at a certain point the story fell a bit apart for me - the characters don't change enough throughout most of the picture. When all the errors resolve, most of that felt contrived to me. I really enjoyed most of everything else by Sturges, but I couldn't follow well on this one on my first viewing.

A practical, but highly unpolitical foreign correspondent finds himself at the heart of political turmoil in WWII Europe A very enjoyable movie, although the overall plot seemed a little constructed within the greater realms of things. Just about when WW2 is to break out, Europe already seems infested with the bellicose virus carried by warmongerers and other despicable criminals. This is the mess that Joel McCrea steps into and tries to get out of. Action story and love tales are always difficult to combine convincingly, I've found, but it works here to some extent. There is not a lot of character development throughout this story. McCrea's guy basically sticks to his guns, and the delightful George Sanders basically rules most of the action in the picture. I would have liked to see more fundamental doubts/changes in the characters. The scene at the mill is quite fantastic. A lot of suspense as McCrea doesn't try to get caught, while moving most of the time. It...