Cary Grant

For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943)

For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, September 2019) You could be forgiven for thinking, at first glance, that Farewell to Arms and For Whom the Bell Tolls are the same movie—after all, aren’t they both Hemingway novel adaptations featuring Cary Grant as a man who fall in love with a woman during wartime? Well, yes, but there are more than a few differences. For Whom the Bell Tolls, having been made ten years later, features colour cinematography, numerous exteriors, Ingrid Bergman (with short hair), more grandiose wartime sequences, fewer classical-Hollywood touches, and more assurance in how it presents its story. As a long (…very long…) look at the life of rebels during the Spanish Civil War, it spends quite a bit of time detailing life in the bush, tensions between combatants and the love story between our two leads. Cary Grant is his usual solid yet unusually bland self, playing opposite Ingrid Bergman but with both of them being outshined by Katina Paxinou’s harsh-talking hard-living character. (Paxinou won an Oscar for the role, and you can immediately see why.) Given that our protagonist is a dynamiter, there are a few explosions to make things far more interesting. Alas, the film will try anyone’s patience at nearly three hours complete with introduction and intermission.  In trying to adapt a novel as faithfully as possible, the script forgets that movies work differently and the entire thing feels far too long. Still, it’s well executed, occasionally moving, explosively exciting at times. But For Whom the Bell Tolls could have been shorter. And it does end on a note very similar to that of Farewell to Arms, triumphant Hollywood cues outshining tragedy and all.

Gunga Din (1939)

Gunga Din (1939)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, August 2019) As a straight white male, I’ve grown increasingly conscious of my own privilege in exploring Hollywood movie history—which was overwhelmingly built by and for straight white men, with the result that they are now best appreciated by straight white men (but maybe not the kind of straight white men who enjoy watching older movies). These issues are impossible to ignore while watching films like Gunga Din, deliberately set in an environment where colonialism is celebrated. Adapted by Rudyard Kipling stories, it’s an adventure film featuring three British soldiers somewhere around the edges of the British Raj, sent to repair communications but soon embroiled in the revival of a murderous cult intent on causing harm to the empire. (The histrionics of the antagonist get so shrill by the end of his speech to the heroes that I half-expected him to conclude with “ … and then I will molest your moms and kick your dogs.”)  Cary Grant, Victor McLaglen and Douglas Fairbanks Jr. are the three likable male leads, with Sam Jaffe playing the titular Gunga Din as a native water carrier who would like nothing more than to fight for the empire. (He gets his wishes, suffers for it and it sent off with the ultimate colonial compliment—”he was a good soldier.”)  Joan Fontaine pops up as one of the soldiers’ fiancée, leading to some curious hijinks in which the two other soldiers do everything they can to sabotage his impending marriage. It all leads to some really good action scenes, suspense sequences and a grand spirit of adventure against overwhelming odds. And that’s the kind of film that Gunga Din is: at once a terrific adventure story in the old-fashioned mould, and yet a disquieting grab-bag of very outdated ideas focusing on the straight white male as the centre of the universe: Boys will be boys (yucky girls had better not disrupt anything), and non-whites are to be killed unless they’re willing to help whites kill other non-whites. Modern viewers will find the end result to be a steady whiplash of contradictions, any enjoyment of the film’s high points constantly being undercut by heave-inducing Victorian values. Even my own privilege failed me throughout Gunga Din: Despite my best intentions and proven capacity at ignoring the bad stuff to focus on the good wasn’t enough to get me to like the result. If I end up recommending Gunga Din in any circumstance, it will be to show how terrible these movies could be.

Sylvia Scarlett (1935)

Sylvia Scarlett (1935)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, July 2019) The historical record tells us that Sylvia Scarlett was a notorious flop upon release; that it had a legendarily bad test screening; and that it helped send Katharine Hepburn’s career in a slump that would take five years to correct. And certainly, it’s a film with its share of flaws—starting with a herky-jerky plot that’s unpredictable not because it’s particularly clever, but because it goes from one thing to another without much forethought. There are some intensely weird mood swings to the story, as it goes from comedy to the death of a main character to once more into comedy. But it’s also a film with many interesting things, especially from a modern perspective. The biggest of those is probably the presence of Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant, both of them young and dashing and still developing the persona that would follow them throughout their career. Grant’s charm is a bit subdued under a Cockney accent and a character meant to keep audiences either guessing or seething. Hepburn’s turn is far more interesting, as the tergiversations of the plot mean that she spends about half the film in drag, playing a young man. She goes from long tresses to a boy’s haircut, with makeup accents meant to highlight her masculine features. It’s not a bad look, and she does sell the illusion despite being, well, 1930s world-class beauty Katharine Hepburn. Brian Aherne also does quite well as a deliciously likable character absolutely unphased by the revelation that Hepburn’s character is, in fact, a girl. One can see, however, that depression-era America may not have known what to do with the gender-bending comedy of the film (complete with real same-sex kissing and proposed perceived same-sex cuddling). Director George Cukor keeps things moving, but there isn’t that much directorial prowess to the 90-minute film. The comedy is more a case of chuckles than outright laughter: it doesn’t go the extra mile and never makes the fullest use of the elements at its disposal. The ending is odd—satisfying at a basic romantic level, and yet a bit scattered in the way it gets there. It’s perhaps best to see Sylvia Scarlett as a curio, an early showcase for two legendary actors, and also an early example of queer cinema at a time when the Hays Code was starting to crack down on anything outside heteronormativity. (One notes that Cukor was homosexual and that Hepburn was widely rumoured to be bisexual.)  By 1935 standards, Sylvia Scarlett may have been an odd flop—but today, it’s far more interesting than most other movies of the time.

Penny Serenade (1941)

Penny Serenade (1941)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, April 2019) I didn’t think it was possible to dislike a Cary Grant film, but here I am, looking at Penny Serenade. Oh, it’s not virulent hatred, nor wall-to-wall dislike. It’s just … not that enjoyable. Part of it has to be that in trying to show the first few years of a marriage, the film becomes an episodic melodrama, meant to make people sob and then rebuild them back into happiness even if it doesn’t quite make sense. It could have worked had it been executed well, but it’s not: instead, there’s a jerky-jerky rhythm to the plot that stops and goes and throws in tragedy instead of plot development and then caps it off with a cheap resolution that doesn’t actually resolve anything. Some of the early moments showing the courtship between our male lead (Grant, in a role with more serious moments and emotional range than many of his other roles—he was nominated for an Oscar for it) and our female lead (the beautiful Irene Dunne, at ease playing Grant’s on-screen wife for the third time but limited by a very traditional script) base their courtship on vinyl records. But the cavalcade of misery that awaits our characters at every turn gets increasingly ludicrous. Raking my brain for a way to make it make sense, the best I came up with was having a secondary character (played by Beulah Bondi) being an actually supernatural fairy godmother—at that point, Penny Serenade makes some kind of plotting sense rather than a collection of drama. Alas, I’m sure that this wasn’t the intended meaning of this melodrama. Unfortunately, that means that the ending (in which a new baby is meant to make everything all right) is hollow and unconvincing: It feels as if Penny Serenade had lasted twenty more minutes, the new kid would have died, some other tragedy would have tested our protagonist (place your bets on WW2!) and we’d be back at the starting point with yet another kid on the way. There are a few good moments along the way—and a few good bits of direction from George Stevens, as ham-fisted and obvious as they may seem to us. But Penny Serenade was never meant to be an audacious film—it’s old-school Hollywood mawkishness, and it’s not unusual that it would feel too broad, too on-the-nose for twenty-first century audiences.

The Bishop’s Wife (1947)

The Bishop’s Wife (1947)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, April 2019) There have been many charming Christmas movies, but The Bishop’s Wife has the undeniable advantage of featuring Cary Grant as an impossibly suave angel come down to Earth to resolve a bishop’s problems. Complications ensue when the bishop’s wife proves irresistible to him—although, this being a 1940s movie, it’s all handled tastefully. Grant couldn’t be better as the angel and completely steals the movie, whereas David Niven is good in the ungrateful role of the bishop (he was originally supposed to play the angel, but Grant was the better choice) and Loretta Young is luminous as the bishop’s wife. A few interesting special effects reaffirm that this isn’t a realistic Christmas movie. Easy to watch and imbued with a decent amount of Christmas spirit, The Bishop’s Wife is still worth a look today.

Only Angels have Wings (1939)

Only Angels have Wings (1939)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, March 2019) There are a few Howard Hawks movies that I like better than Only Angels have Wings, but it does bring together a lot of what made Hawks such a compelling director. It’s a rip-roaring adventure featuring tough guys, as it focuses on a South American airmail company featuring intrepid pilots and dangerous planes. Cary Grant headlines the cast as the head pilot and manager of the small, almost bankrupt company. There’s some hope in the form of a new contract, but achieving it will mean death-defying mountain flying. As if that wasn’t enough, there’s romantic tension thanks to a newly arrived singer (Jean Arthur) and the protagonist’s ex-flame (Rita Hayworth). The mountain passes are treacherous and the planes are underpowered, but the mail must go through no matter how many special-effect crash sequences this means. Directed and partially written by Hawks, Only Angels have Wings clearly shows him working in his element, with a group of tough men and equally tough women working at the frontier of human ingenuity. The dialogue is smart, the pacing is fast, and there’s enough humour and romance to enliven what remains a manly adventure story. The special effects are surprisingly good and impressive for the time. The result is liable to fascinate early aviation fans, even despite the limited means of the time. Grant is his usual charismatic self, with good support from Arthur and a short but eye-catching role for Hayworth (in what is often considered her breakout film). An essential part of the Hawks filmography, Only Angels have Wings still has enough thrills and charm to be worth a look by twenty-first century audiences … like much of Hawk’s filmography.

Arsenic and Old Lace (1944)

Arsenic and Old Lace (1944)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(Youtube Streaming, November 2018) It’s easy to like Arsenic and Old Lace if you already like Cary Grant—after all, the film is his showcase, as he goes from being a suave newlywed man of letters to becoming increasingly frantic as he discovers that his aunts and then his brother are all proficient serial killers in their own ways. It’s not a good thing to discover on one’s honeymoon, and things get crazier as he also tries to manage an insane uncle, friendly policemen and fights to stay alive given the presence of a psychopath or two. The black comedy of Arsenic and Old Lace is a bit surprising in a post-Code mid-1940s comedy, but the film did have a strong theatrical pedigree, being an adaptation of a long-running Broadway play. Frank Capra directs what is essentially a stage play with some flair (a bit of a departure from his usual fare), but much of the work is done by the actors. If you want to see a face-off between Cary Grant and Peter Lorre, well, this is your movie. Grant does play the role very broadly, but his facial expressions are terrific—the sequence in which he’s tied up and gagged has some hilarious comedy moments simply because of the way he uses his face and eyes. Grant hasn’t often played a character as out-of-control as in Arsenic and Old Lace, but it works largely because his usual persona is the one we see at the beginning of the film—what if such a person got in as bad a scrap as in here? There’s even a metafictional moment in which his character comments on the stupidity of stage characters … while making the exact same mistakes. The beginning of the film is a bit laborious, but like most farces it converges in time for a high-spirited last act in which everything collides. Some of the acting and staging choices will seem a bit on-the-nose, but Arsenic and Old Lace is still funny and still well-worth seeing today.

Notorious (1947)

Notorious (1947)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On DVD, September 2018) Alfred Hitchcock, Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman. I could just stop here and that’s all you’d need to know about Notorious. If you really want to know more, consider that it’s a romantic suspense thriller in which an American agent asks the daughter of a disgraced man to offer herself as bait to enemy agents, with the complication that he himself is falling for the woman. (If this sounds familiar, it’s because it’s been re-used in many, many other movies such as Mission: Impossible II) But, of course, the plot is the least of the film’s strengths, what with Hitchcock gleefully messing with the conventions of the romantic thriller and the limitations of the Hays code to deliver a two-minutes on-screen kiss. It’s good fun, especially when you measure today’s expectations against what’s shown in the film. (Ten minutes in, and there’s a drunk-driving sequence that would be flat-out unacceptable today.) The ending is a bit abrupt but no less satisfying. Grant and Bergman are at their respective best here, even though they’re both playing darker version of their usual persona. Still, Notorious remains a worthy Hitchcock thriller from his black-and-white Hollywood phase.

To Catch a Thief (1955)

To Catch a Thief (1955)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On TV, July 2018) Cary Grant, Alfred Hitchcock, Grace Kelly and the French Riviera—what more could you ask from To Catch a Thief? Hitchcock here lets go of relentless suspense in order to favour a breezy romantic comedy involving jewels thefts and a former master burglar trying to clear his name. Grant is effortlessly charming as the retired cat-burglar and he sets the mood for the rest of the film. Kelly is blander than expected, although it’s amusing to see her strut around the Riviera given her later position as the Princess of Monaco. John Williams (who always looks like John Cleese to me) also gets a good supporting role as an insurance man helping out the protagonist. Set against the sunny seaside scenery, this is a bit of a departure of Hitchcock, who doesn’t really try for suspense (even when the film could have called for it, such as the final sequence) as much as romantic banter and gentle crime. The atmosphere is well executed and the result is good sunny fun. To modern audiences, To Catch a Thief does have a bit of awkward fifties-style staging—most notably in the nighttime villa burglary sequence, not to mention the quasi-omnipresent rear-screen projection. But, as with the unnatural colours and high-class characters, this is part of the package: watch the film, travel back in time.

His Girl Friday (1940)

His Girl Friday (1940)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, June 2018) There are many reasons why His Girl Friday shouldn’t work. The characters aren’t particularly nice people. A man about to be executed is at the centre of the film’s premise, which is odd for something often billed as a romantic comedy. A woman in a tragic situation becomes a comic device, and then the film makes it even worse by playing her quasi-suicide for laughs. The ending shows no real character growth. And yet His Girl Friday is fantastic. It’s a riot of laughs, a whirlwind of lightning-fast dialogue, a strong show of characters and it still has, more than seventy years later, both crackling energy and some thematic depth. Cary Grant is wonderful as a tough newspaper editor who browbeats both employees and lovers into doing what he wants—an utterly repellent character transformed into a striking comic figure through sheer acting talent. The first fifteen minutes, in particular, have Grant at his best. Rosalind Russell is equally good as a reporter who can’t quite quit either the business or her ex-husband. A sparkling battle-of-the-sexes comedy of remarriage, doubling as a highly cynical (yet uplifting) look at the news business, His Girl Friday still has plenty to wow audiences even today—the speed of the dialogue alone feels very contemporary and so does the biting cynicism about the news business. The film is optimized for speed, not detail—then-veteran director Howard Hawks (in almost exact mid-career) knew that he didn’t have to do anything to get in the way of his two lead actors, and the results speak for themselves. His Girl Friday is well-known today partly because it accidentally ended up in the public domain and has since then been a staple of late-night cable TV broadcasts, but it’s actually really good on its own. It’s got enough laughs to please modern audiences, especially now that the bad behaviour of its characters doesn’t seem so awful.

The Philadelphia Story (1940)

The Philadelphia Story (1940)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On DVD, June 2018) The great things about digging deeper and deeper in a hobby is that the digging eventually produces its own rewards. In my case, I’ve been watching older and older movies, and discovering new favourite actors. To have The Philadelphia Story pop up on my pile of films to watch at this point is a gift: A movie starring Katharine Hepburn and James Stewart and Cary Grant? What have I done to get such a treat? Even better: it’s a screwball comedy, fast establishing itself as one of my favourite bygone genres. I was primed for a good time and got exactly what I wanted: A fast, witty, fun romantic comedy featuring Hepburn at her most alluring, Stewart as his usual sympathetic self and Grant in a plum comic role. The script provides witty lines, great characters and a savvy understanding of the mechanics of the genre, while director George Cukor keeps things moving even as the film multiplies small subplots on the way to a satisfying conclusion. Among supporting players, Ruth Hussey is surprisingly fun as a no-nonsense photographer, while Virginia Weidler is a discovery as a sassy young sister. Still, this is a picture that belongs to Hepburn, perfectly cast as a woman struggling with goddess-hood. Both Stewart and Grant also play to their strengths, helping to make The Philadelphia Story a definitive statement about three screen legends. It still plays exceptionally well today.

Suspicion (1941)

Suspicion (1941)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, May 2018) Great casting can make or break a movie, but I’m still not too sure what it does to Alfred Hitchcock’s Suspicion. Casting Cary Grant as a suave, sophisticated, easily charming man who ends up hiding an inglorious past to his wife seems like a slam-dunk: By that point in his career, Grant had developed a screen persona ideally suited to this kind of role. But the sword cuts both ways, given how audiences weren’t (and still aren’t) so willing to accept Grant as a purely evil character. Hence the ending that explains a few things and allows viewers to walk away satisfied and reassured in Grant’s persona. It’s a relief of an ending, but is it the most appropriate one? I still don’t know. The novel on which the film is based took a far more ambiguous approach to the same material, keeping up the eponymous suspicion through which the heroine (Joan Fontaine; rather good) comes to regard her new husband. Still, Suspicion remains a joy to watch. Hitchcock had achieved an unusual mastery of balance between comedy and suspense at that stage of his career, and the film’s domestic-paranoia theme would dovetail with a number of similar thrillers throughout the 1940s. The lack of a dark ending may stop the film from reaching its ultimate potential, but I’m not sure I’d change it. After all, I do like my Cary Grant suave, debonair and (ultimately) on the side of the angels even if he’s been a little devil along the way.

The Awful Truth (1937)

The Awful Truth (1937)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, May 2018) Considering that The Awful Truth is the movie that created Cary Grant’s comic persona, we should be grateful for its existence and for director Leo McCarey’s instincts in guiding Grant toward his vision of the role. This is a late-thirties screwball comedy that practically exemplifies the sophisticated and urbane “Comedy of remarriage” so characteristic to the years following the introduction of the Hays Code: Here we’ve got Grand and co-star Irene Dunne as an unhappily married couple that decides to divorce, then sabotage each other’s new affairs before realizing that they are each other’s best partners. (Try not to think too much about the liberties allowed to only the very rich people in the 1930s.) It’s decently funny—maybe not as much as other later efforts from Grant, but still amusing, and Dunne has good timing as well. (Plus Skippy the dog!) Divorce has rarely been so much fun. The comedy isn’t just about the lines, but the physical performances of the actors and their interactions—read up on the improvisational making-of imposed by McCarey to learn more about how the picture was shaped by on-set ideas and follow-up. If I didn’t already know how much I love screwball comedy, The Awful Truth would have taught me.

Monkey Business (1952)

Monkey Business (1952)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(In French, On Cable TV, May 2018) It’s easy to see why Monkey Business is often considered to be a loose follow-up to Bringing up Baby—Howard Hawks is back with a fast-paced comedy, Cary Grant reprises his silly intellectual mode, Ginger Rogers steps in as the wilder female partner and the film is at its best when it’s just goofing around. Thanks to a high-concept premise (what if a serum gave you back your youth … or at least made you regress back in age mentally?), there are plenty of opportunities for random silliness. The film never gets better than seeing Day play at being a bratty schoolgirl, although seeing Marilyn Monroe vamp it up as a voluptuous secretary is also fun. While it’s technically a science-fiction film, Monkey Business is best seen as a farce reteaming Hawks and Grant together and just having fun along the way. (This being said, the film’s best laugh comes early on in the opening credits sequence, as the director tells Grant “not yet” and to go back behind the door before making an entrance. Alas, the film doesn’t go back to metatextual comedy.)  It’s really not quite up to Bringing up Baby’s standards—the film is occasionally annoying (the monkey), occasionally dull (anything with the scientists), occasionally offensive to modern sensibilities (never mind “the secretary”; I have in mind the “Indian scalping” schoolyard playing.)  It’s still not a bad time thanks to the aforementioned goofing off, but it could have been better.

Charade (1963)

Charade (1963)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, March 2018) It does take a while before Charade comes into focus. It begins strangely, with a contrived meet-cute at a ski resort in the Alps that turns into an even stranger succession of events once the heroine comes back to Paris to find out that her husband has died, a large amount of money is missing, and three strangers really hated her ex-husband. The artificiality of the setup is almost overpowering, and even the comforting presences of Audrey Hepburn as the widow and Cary Grant as a mysterious free agent aren’t quite enough to unpack the heavy-handed setup. But as the deaths and double-crosses being to pile up, Charade does acquire a nice velocity, and even answers the questions raised in the first act. Hepburn is adorable as the endangered heroine, despite being too young for the role. Meanwhile, Grant is terrific as someone who may or may not be friendly—he’s occasionally very funny (ha, that shower scene!), and his last grimace of self-revelation at the very end is like seeing a split-second callback to the classic comedies early in his career. Also noteworthy as supporting roles for Walter Matthau, George Kennedy and James Coburn. Great scores and visual design by Henry Mancini and Saul Bass round up an impressive crew. Surprisingly not directed by Alfred Hitchcock, Charade is increasingly endearing the longer it goes on, and satisfyingly blends romance, comedy and suspense. It’s well worth watching. Just make sure to give it more than thirty minutes to make sense.