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L'amour et la mort, simply, the great beneficiary is Cocteau. A blizzard of confetti engulfs Italian aristocrats while the principessa (Evelyn Venable) kneels in church, "a kind of happiness" eludes the ethereal lass. The illustrious guest materializes as a shadow alongside the racing roadster, then a translucent cloak at the palatial villa, finally Fredric March in resplendent uniform and monocle. "I am the point of contact between eternity and time," his reluctant host the duke (Guy Standing) is nonplussed. A three-day getaway to study the fear and desire of mortals, that means learning about wine and gambling and romance while newspaper headlines marvel at the lack of casualties in disasters. "But what a monstrous, what a sublime joke!" Not Lang's weary Reaper but Mitchell Leisen's, a screwball comedy perpetually on the verge of breaking through the self-consciously poetic coating. Death yearns for beauty even as his touch withers it, he accepts a white carnation and raises a toast to "all brave illusion." A pair of socialites vie for his attention, one is a Yank (Gail Patrick) who scarcely appreciates his running commentary on their kiss: "Did you bring me out here to analyze me?" The other is a countess (Catherine Alexander) who realizes she's in over her head with the spectral visitor. ("Try me," he responds with a fulminating skull that suddenly reveals the March of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.) The grandfather clock chiming in the cavernous hall, the conventional couple reflected upside-down in the garden pond. The experiment comes to a head with the ingénue suspended between realms and "the release of dreams," a morbid transcendence emulated by Mankiewicz in The Ghost and Mrs. Muir. With Helen Westley, Kathleen Howard, Kent Taylor, and Henry Travers. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |