Irene (1940)

(On Cable TV, January 2022) It’s not because it’s classic Hollywood that it’s, well, classic—there are plenty of half-remembered films that don’t quite work even when they use tried-and-true elements, and Irene certainly feels like one of them. It should be better than it is—it certainly plays with solid tropes, with its shopgirl heroine getting swept into a Cinderella-like episode with a richer man. Irene’s most remarkable moment is when it goes from black and white to colour the time of an evening ball, but even that isn’t all that enough to keep the film from feeling unusually dull and distant. Romantic criss-crosses help but don’t improve the film enough. Despite being an adaptation of a Broadway theatrical, Irene doesn’t impress much with its musical numbers either. Anna Neagle doesn’t do all that badly as the titular character, but the film itself lets her down. Oh, Irene is watchable—but memorable? That’s another story.