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Breakfast at Tiffany's is the paramount beneficiary, "have you forgotten we're heels?" Out of the subway and into the salon, the daily grind of the working girl (Carole Lombard) who dreams of luxury, the top of the heap is a millionaire in a wheelchair (Ralph Bellamy). The fellow playing hopscotch on the marble floor (Fred MacMurray) evinces the whimsy of the moneyed, his session with the nervous manicurist leaves him with bloodied cuticles. Actually an impoverished playboy ("Remember that thing called the Crash? Well... that was us"), he takes to his new station as moocher cheerfully and aims for the pineapple heiress (Astrid Allwyn), the heroine makes for a solid ally. Greed is the foundation, love finds a way. "We're not for each other." "I think we are." Mitchell Leisen finding his sweet spot under Lubitsch's aegis, the romance streaked with veins of giddiness and hurt. The two protagonists treat themselves to a posh dinner, their veneer of sophistication is quaked by hiccups and nearly laid bare by attire etiquette. "Onion soup. My life begins." (As an unwanted suitor driven away by a bogus domestic squabble, William Demarest exits his scene in a rehearsal of his Sturges tumble.) Gold-digger and gigolo scoff at their emotions until he doffs his pajamas and lies under a tanning lamp, the attraction must be denied over the course of a restless night, a passage of pure erotic longing. "Women like to be swept off their feet." "That's what I'm here for." "Well, then take my advice and don't do it with a feather duster." The standing coin in the middle of a traffic jam is quite an ambiguous image for the couple's future, Leisen checks back with them soon enough in Swing High, Swing Low. With Ruth Donnelly, Marie Prevost, Edward Gargan, Marcelle Corday, and Murray Alper. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |