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Between continental elegance and screwball tumult, the chronicle of a good deed. Out of the orphanage and into "the largest motion picture theater in Budapest" for the heroine (Margaret Sullavan), introduced pigtailed and fervent and quickly dangling from a kitchen lamp in a fairytale demonstration. At work she guides customers with a wand and a smile, one such moviegoer (Reginald Owen) shares her tears as a melodrama unfolds onscreen and becomes her gruff "nurse maid." Baronial suitors at the luxurious ball (cf. Ophüls' La Signora di Tutti), plus the Minister of Futility (Eric Blore) negotiating a staircase through a soused monocle. Cornered by the meat magnate (Frank Morgan), the usherette pulls a husband out of the phone book: The small-time attorney (Herbert Marshall), honest thus poor, who becomes the millionaire's puzzled beneficiary and the orphan's oblivious suitor. "The air is full of revolution... and romance." A major overhaul of Molnár by Preston Sturges, who peppers the text with names like Ginglebuscher and Schlapkohl in centrifugal prattle. ("Last night I was full of Dutch courage, and when I'm full of Dutch courage I behave very Frenchly."). A graceful traffic cop in the midst of careening wolves and lambs, William Wyler contemplates the dazed lawyer in a reverie about a pencil-sharpener and seeds of his deep-focus style are suddenly visible. (Marshall is allowed one lilting moment, at the barbershop biding adieu to his beloved whiskers.) "Genuine Foxine," mirrored into infinity in the ingenué's mind and torn apart when reality intrudes. "Oh, that was old when Jonah ate the whale!" Groundwork for The Palm Beach Story and Roman Holiday, and in Sullavan's last close-up the acknowledgment of a gleaming star. With Beulah Bondi, Alan Hale, Cesar Romero, Luis Alberni, and June Clayworth. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |