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"All right, two schools of thought," the Hellenic and the Hebraic of the law in screwball debate. It opens like Hitchcock's Saboteur and closes like Capra's Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, in between there's a clear template for Mankiewicz, who recruits two of its stars for related titles (The Late George Apley, People Will Talk). The mill burns and the activist (Cary Grant) gets blamed, he flees from jail and hides in the attic of a cottage owned by his former schoolmate (Jean Arthur). "There seems to be a strange atmosphere hanging over this house," observes the vacationing scholar (Ronald Colman), who's renting the place and promptly notes the landlady's "nervous, impulsive quality." The incognito fugitive makes for an enthusiastic partner in discussions on the letter and the spirit of justice while the police draw nearer. "The law is a gun pointed at somebody's head. It all depends upon which end of the gun you stand." Madcap sweetening for a civics meditation, George Stevens smooths the curious hybrid with an unruffled camera. The New England burg is manipulated by corrupt businessmen and prone to bloodthirsty mobs, still the professor bound for the Supreme Court professes the need for detachment: "The philosophy behind the deed, that's my field." The enlightenment of baseball, the caviar of borscht, the tell-tale newspaper photograph suddenly obscured by fried eggs in a Magritte gag. (Even more surreal is the lingering close-up of Rex Ingram as the valet growing misty in mourning for the fuddy-duddy's shorn beard.) The thawing of the academic mind leads to the capitol courthouse, where a sprawling crane shot locates the lady's wink in the cavernous chamber. "I'll take feelings every time." Stevens himself recomposes the arrangement in The More the Merrier. With Edgar Buchanan, Glenda Farrell, Charles Dingle, Clyde Fillmore, Leonid Kinskey, Emma Dunn, Tom Tyler, Don Beddoe, and Lloyd Bridges. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |