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It rouses a provincial burg and warms the governor's venal heart, "the biggest thing happening to this state since we stole it from the Indians." Patriotism in the Midwest home front is a mighty aphrodisiac, so learns the Kockenlocker clan when the shopgirl (Betty Hutton) skips off to the boogie-woogie orgy that is a farewell party for soldiers, a kaleidoscope of jitterbugging and spiked lemonade. "Ya gotta kiss the boys goodbye." The morning after brings a forgotten marriage and the following weeks a surprise pregnancy, the maiden's delicate condition envelops the lovelorn schnook (Eddie Bracken) in a perpetual blur of stutters and spots. Her father the town constable (William Demarest) kicks the air as her sardonic sister (Diana Lynn) walks away, all he wanted was to sit on the porch and polish his pistol and now he has to deal with bigamy and jailbreak. "Daughters. Phooey." Preston Sturges at his most cyclonic, the salacious and the sublime in continuous collision and fusion. The cluck was made to take the fall "like the ox was made to eat and the grape was made to drink," the girl is moved by his devotion and triggers his paroxysms with a confession, a couple of extended tracking shots ponder their zigzagging emotions. The dowager and her trombone at the military shindig, the hero who ambles dazedly through a screen door and trembles in a baggy doughboy uniform, the justice of the peace with reassuring words for nervous lovebirds: "Nothing to be scared of. People do it everyday. The bad part comes later." Sturges' Nativity finds a cow in the kitchen and the holy offering of plum pudding, his punchline has propaganda trumping prudishness before the gift of superabundance. ("Hitler Demands Recount," screams a front-page headline.) Among the responses are Delaney's A Taste of Honey and Germi's Seduced and Abandoned. Cinematography by John Seitz. With Porter Hall, Emory Parnell, Al Bridge, Julius Tannen, Jimmy Conlin, Brian Donlevy, and Akim Tamiroff. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |