Once Upon a Honeymoon (1942)

(On Cable TV, August 2020) You really can’t go wrong with a combination of Cary Grant and Ginger Rogers, especially not in Once Upon a Honeymoon, a propaganda romantic comedy film (!) in which Grant (as a journalist) helps Rogers (playing a burlesque performer passing as a high-society woman) unmask her fiancé as a Nazi. Travelling through Germany, her fiancé seems curiously involved in every country that falls to the invading German forces, eventually forcing her to work for the American government in unmasking him. Once Upon a Honeymoon was clearly meant as propaganda considering how, despite its jolly tone, Rogers’ character ends up murdering her Nazi fiancé at the climax for the picture (he had it coming – it was self-defence) and everyone laughs it up as the only good Nazi being a dead Nazi. (They’re right, but it’s still a bit jarring considering how Grant makes funny faces in the middle of it all.) That ending sequence is the cap on what is indeed a bit of an uneven film, shifting between serious thriller and fluffy romantic comedy at the drop of a hat and then over again. It’s a certainly a curio in that Grant tries to play his character both as a romantic lead and a thriller hero. I’m not sure there were that many romantic comedies taking aim at Nazis, and I’ll always welcome one more. I’ll probably have another look at Once Upon a Honeymoon eventually, knowing what to expect.