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Howard Hawks doesn't dawdle, the intimation of Rodin in the opening segues right into a dirty joke: "I think this one must belong in the tail." "Nonsense. You tried it in the tail yesterday and it didn't fit." Cary Grant in white lab coat and specs is the embodiment of academic ennui, the paleontologist further ossified by the all-business fiancée (Virginia Walker). His opposite number is Katharine Hepburn's ticklish disarray as the heiress cutting an anarchic swath through New England, the goddess Ate in debutante gowns. Stolen golf balls and wrecked cars, crushed top hats and ripped tuxedos, "the love impulse" in full, savage swing. "In moments of quiet I'm strangely drawn towards you, but there haven't been any quiet moments." Wealthy matron (May Robson), big-game hunter (Charlie Ruggles), constable (Walter Catlett) and shrink (Fritz Feld), society and masculinity and law and psychiatry as pure figures of fun. The animalistic urge, Baby the tame leopard and his perilous twin, meanwhile George the fox terrier snatches and buries the primeval intercostal clavicle. "Mating cries," the hero stripped and fitted into a frilly peignoir and crowned with a butterfly net. "Who are you?" "I don't know. I'm not quite myself today." The screwball whirl nonpareil, at once underplayed and run to its limits by Hawks in a marvelously orchestrated crescendo. Fools and critters, Connecticut estate and three-ring circus, the pandemonium of fluidity led by the smitten blueblood who can turn underworld moll in the wink of an eye. Salvation and demolition jostle on the path to wholeness, the embrace comes at last on the ruins of the great brontosaurus. "We're right back where we started, only we're wet." Hitchcock offers his own retelling in North by Northwest, though not before Tourneur takes a different tack with Cat People. Cinematography by Russell Metty. With Barry Fitzgerald, George Irving, Tala Birell, Leona Roberts, and John Kelly. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |