Count Your Blessings (1959)

(On Cable TV, July 2021) Idiot plotting has always been a staple of Hollywood screenwriting and audiences have accepted some famously stupid stuff over the years, but there’s always a point where enough-is-enough, and Count Your Blessings is a particularly egregious example of the form. Presented as a Technicolor romantic comedy, it features an Englishwoman who gets swept off her feel by a charming Frenchman during WW2, only for her to get married and impregnated in the mere days before he returns to the front. That’s wild enough, but not unusual for movies of that era. But wait, because after that he doesn’t return to her for nine years, pretexting various military engagements around the world. By the time he comes back to meet his nine-year-old son, nearly every viewer will scream at the heroine to get away from him as soon as possible. It’s the world’s least surprising plot development when he’s revealed to be a womanizer, keeping several mistresses thanks to the family fortune. The heroine finally decides at some point to divorce, but what would have been a happy ending soon sours when their adorable nine-year-old poppet somehow manages to get them back together, at which point the film concludes on a note of horror rather than happy romance. The plotting is bad enough, but the execution somehow makes it even worse: Deborah Kerr doesn’t seem particularly pleased with romantic counterpart Rossano Brazzi, and the film’s stultified directing makes everything feel slow, artificial and contrived. Maurice Chevalier barely escapes with his dignity intact as the “wise” old uncle providing advice to the couple — but we know that his character was probably even worse during his youth. I frankly watched the film only because I’m a Chevalier completist, but this is a low point in his filmography despite his fine performance with bad material. Not every Classic Hollywood film was a hit — there are plenty of duds as well, and Count Your Blessings is unquestionably one of them.