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Escapism ca. 1940 can no longer dodge history, Mitchell Leisen finds the turbulence under the satin. The Spanish Civil War provides "palooka preliminaries before Hitler and Chamberlain warm up," the American pilot (Ray Milland) has a game of casino with a padre and a firing squad outside his cell. "Isn't there anything I can do for you?" "Yes. Give me some better cards." Clemency is granted thanks to the wife he doesn't have, actually an Associated News reporter (Claudette Colbert) angling for a scoop, they flee by plane after she bops a guard on the head with her typewriter. "I needed a good climax." The stopover in Paris allows for a lavish soundstage evocation of Maxim's, "Dream Lover" is hummed by the heroine tipsy on champagne and mint. Afterward, the journalistic mind is visualized as a single page typed and retyped while neon from the café where the flyboy waits glows by the hotel window. The train ride to Berlin is interrupted for a lyrical interlude in Compiègne, Nazi squadrons flying overhead announce the end of the enchanted forest and the start of the war zone. "It's like waking up and finding the house on fire." Adventure into romance into propaganda, genre and mood fluid and mercurial as can be, closer to King's Marie Galante than to Hitchcock's Foreign Correspondent. Repartee above the clouds and a toast aboard the torpedoed liner, the Song of Solomon by way of Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett as interventionist clarion call. "Imagine being in Cleveland, seeing the war from a newsreel in the Little Nemo theater, watching the bombers dive and all you can do is hiss." McCarey is right around the corner with Once Upon a Honeymoon. With Walter Abel, Dennis O'Keefe, George Zucco, Dick Purcell, Frank Puglia, Esther Dale, Paul Leyssac, Ann Codee, and Stanley Logan. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |