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A Gallic view of the new world, not Renoir's Georgia (Swamp Water) but René Clair's Big Easy. Storybook antebellum, Mississippi legends, "has anyone in the audience ever seen a wedding dress floating down that river?" The absconding bride is a memory from The Italian Straw Hat and Le Million reappears at the opera, the true spectacle is the sham countess (Marlene Dietrich) fainting in the balcony. The suitor (Roland Young) is a rich banker who challenges rivals to duels and then sweats beads when knives come out, "so domineering..." The belle agrees to marry him but her heart belongs to the sea captain with the pet capuchin, Bruce Cabot as a fair Clark Gable decoy. "Never embarrass a lady by leaving her alone with a... with a gentleman." Clair in Hollywood, a mobile camera drinking in Southern bustle while noticing the vibrant Black populace on the margins. (Theresa Harris as Dietrich's sly confidante and conspirator has a rare role worthy of her.) Manners and disguises, love circuitous and direct. "Excuse me, my monkey jumped in the window." The tightrope that becomes a swinging vine, the trajectory of a bit of whispered gossip across a salon during a recital. A rich meal for the cast, Mischa Auer and Franklin Pangborn as Saint Petersburg rakes, Melville Cooper's Matisse resemblance and Anne Revere's drop of vinegar, even Shemp Howard turns up. The kiss tilts up to a boat lamp and dissolves to a panning view of sails at dawn that comes to rest on Andy Devine yawning. "Unfortunately, there is a side of man's nature that has always been a woman's burden," warns the dithering mother-in-law (Laura Hope Crews) to the heroine's widening smile. Wilder borrows the uncouth Dietrich twin for Witness for the Prosecution. With Clarence Muse, Frank Jenks, Eddie Quillan, Emily Fitzroy, and Dorothy Adams. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |