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"Flying in the fog," everybody's story. Up in the air and low on fuel with the playboy aviator (George Brent), it costs the lives of his family and leaves him with survivor's guilt, globe-trotting flippancy becomes tacit therapy as well as death drive. "We've a lot of respect for each other, the heavens and I." He locks eyes with the socialite (Kay Francis) as they look past the boring swells at a soiree, enough sheer attraction to magnetize the camera into a pair of back-and-forth pans and kick off a night-long lyrical interlude. (She showcases her lisping dexterity during a horse carriage ride and he demonstrates the romantic way of dunking donuts, Edgar Kennedy as the simmering restaurant owner just wants to close up and go home.) He lists the reasons why they shouldn't be together to no avail, "alright... get your hat," they step out of church married and sit on the sidewalk to wonder where to go from there. "I've simply got to stay to see what makes you tick that funny way." A Frank Borzage screwball melodrama, strange and vulnerable and bumpy and utterly affecting. The husband is tasked with purchasing bread and returns full of caviar, aboard the commuter train he's shunned by coworkers for not knowing how to play bridge. The "professional fixer" friend (Warren William) can only help so much, the wife comes home one afternoon to find their backyard turned into a hangar, a moment distinctly remembered by Demme in Melvin and Howard. The aerial folly is christened with ketchup in the absence of champagne, "I won't be a nursemaid to your stupid delusions," a crash damages and a crash heals. Weir takes a different tack in Fearless. With Helen Lowell, Henry O'Neill, Russell Hicks, Maude Turner Gordon, Samuel S. Hinds, and Martha Merrill. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |