Please Believe Me (1950)

(On Cable TV, December 2022) I have a hard time mustering more than polite indifference to Please Believe Me, despite it being a romantic comedy in which Deborah Kerr, of course, attracts a trio of suitors. There are misunderstandings of illusory fortunes at the heart of most of the film’s subplots, but we know that true love will win over everything else. The film is at its strongest when it’s aboard an ocean liner going to America, with the old-school splendour and atmosphere of a semi-closed environment helping to build the plot. But the film doesn’t entirely take place aboard the boat, and it loses narrative momentum the moment it boards in New York and we move from the romantic-comic set-pieces to plot resolution. Kerr looks great here, and Peter Lawford can be counted upon as one of his suitors but the film itself (an unusually bland effort from comedy director Norman Taurog) feels overly bland: there are at least two ocean-liner romantic comedies starring Jane Russel that are better than this one. Please Believe Me is okay and fine if you’re receptive to that kind of romantic comedy, but it’s really not worth any undue effort to watch.