The Awful Truth came out of a trend that was in vogue during the 1930s. It’s called a comedy of “remarriage.” During the Hays Code era, it allowed films to nimbly skirt the whole issue of divorce and extramarital romance. We would see it again in the more remembered screwball His Girl Friday and various other forms as My Favorite Wife and The Lady Eve.
However, when I first saw this film I was floored by its pure comic fun that pushed Cary Grant’s persona into the public eye for the first time and made me consider Irene Dunne one of the most underrated actresses that I can possibly conjure up. I try not to use the Oscars to define the greatness of a film or star, but for her, I’ll break the rule. She got nominated for Best Actress 5 times and never won. To call her a Jean Arthur-type is rather condescending given both stars’ magnitude, and I will say she easily gives Katharine Hepburn at least a run for Cary Grant’s best romantic partner. She was an unexpected joy of beauty perfectly wed with comedic wit.
I was afraid that with that element of surprise gone the film would lose some of its mystique. True, perhaps it was not as magical this time around, but I will still acknowledge the merit of The Awful Truth as an often under-appreciated gem of a comedy. Director Leo McCarey came into his element in 1937 with this film and Make Way for Tomorrow. They are starkly different pictures, but here he embraces the tension, the awkwardness, and everything else that makes comedy transcendent. And there is hardly anyone more transcendent than Cary Grant.
His smirks, which would be recycled for His Girl Friday and numerous other films, are universal. His adeptness with pratfalls and physical comedy are fully on display, and he simply had smashingly good chemistry with Dunne. Every time they throw a jab and the sparks begin to fly you know how much they care for each other, just like two of Ralph Bellamy’s chickens madly in love. A great deal of their success could undoubtedly be attributed to McCarey who gave them very little actual script to work with and forced them into ad-libbing scenes. The results speak for themselves.
In truth, the film begins quite innocently enough before evolving into an utterly acrimonious divorce proceeding, ending with a bitter fight for their prized pooch Mr. Smith (Asta of Thin Man fame). The second round goes to Grant as he plays third wheel with Lucy’s new air-headed, Texas beau Dan (Ralph Bellamy). He makes a new acquaintance of a southern belle who just happens to be a nightclub singer. Her performance is an awkward affair crossing Gone with the Wind with Marilyn Monroe‘s antics in The Seven Year Itch. We could take or leave her little ditty, but the reactions from our stars are priceless. On top of that, Grant shows his tumbling prowess a couple times, while also having a lark with Mr. Smith in the home of his old love and hiding behind doors at all the inopportune times. Lucy can’t seem to get rid of him and by the end of it all, she doesn’t quite want to.
Round three goes to Dunne as she tries to find a way to weasel her way back into Jerry’s life. He’s about to be wed to a high-brow socialite, but Lucy gets into the mix by masquerading as Jerry’s screwy sister. It’s an inspired bit of ditziness that Dunne plays to a tee, being the remarkable comedienne that she is. Meanwhile, the whole well-to-do family looks on rather stink-eyed, as Grant and Dunne spar back and forth. She’s trying to mess things up, he’s trying to keep all the plates from toppling as he attempts to maintain all his covers stories. It’s fit to be a disaster.
The final act is the most wistful because time is winding down and we know what that means. Jerry and Lucy won’t be married anymore. But they both still love each other, they just won’t say anything for fear that this is a one-way street. Happy endings abound in an old cabin in the woods. There, creaky doors, kitty cats, and cuckoo clocks spell wedding bells. And they go out on top, together again, in one bed. Grant and Dunne remained a phenomenal screen couple for a couple more films, but this original offering from McCarey was undoubtedly their best.
4.5/5 Stars
We are definitely in the age of the well-wrought period piece and Brooklyn has all the trappings you could want. Adapted from Colm Toibin’s novel the film showcases a pure, noble heroine in Eillis Lacy who like many others makes the journey from her homeland of Ireland to the golden-paved streets of New York.
The Martian is not the film you first expect. It’s a space thriller. It has tense moments assuredly, but it also has an astute sense of humor that pulses through the film as its lifeblood. It makes Ridley Scott’s latest endeavor, based on the novel by Andy Weir, all the more palatable because it lends a fresh face to space exploration.
Adapted from the John le Carré novel, this is a black & white spy thriller that personifies cold war paranoia in ways that Bond never could. Richard Burton is an operative working in Berlin before being demoted to a librarian job. It looks like our narrative is heading in a direction hardly fit for a spy film. Its intentions are not so obvious at first, and it keeps its audience working for the rest of the film.
We are brought into the world of Lew Harper with a cold open full of character. There he is. 
“If you’ve ever wondered where your dreams come from, look around, this is where they’re made.” – Ben Kingsley as George Melies
Aside from the inspector, the station is full of a wide array of charming individuals who generally exhibit temperaments far more personable. However, the local toy shop owner (Ben Kingsley) is rather an odd fellow, who keeps to himself, but Hugo is wrong to cross him. He’s not a bad man, but he makes the boy work for all the things he has purloined.
Hugo is a beautifully magical melding of the old with the new –- the mechanical and the visceral. Extravagant colors make Scorsese’s canvas pop. It works together like clockwork.
The Marriage of Maria Braun opens with a bang and a thud, literally, as bombs rain down on Germany in the waning hours of WWII. It’s perhaps the most chaotic wedding ceremony ever put to celluloid. And the story ends in an equally theatrical fashion.
It’s hardly Charles Dickens, but still, Hard Times is a real tooth and claw street brawler. We have Charles Bronson as our token taciturn drifter, tough and down on his luck during the Depression. James Coburn is Speed, a fast-talking promoter looking for a quick buck. Walter Hill’s film may not be pretty to look at, but boy is it a lot of fun! Everyone’s favorite supporting scene stealer Strother Martin makes an appearance as a sometime doctor who dropped out of med school. These three men are at the center of an evolving partnership that comes into being on the streets of New Orleans, that hopping town of jazz, juke joints, and bare-knuckle boxing. The latter is the most important for the men aforementioned because, with Speed as his manager and Poe as his ringside doc, Chaney looks to rule the ocean front with his grit and tenacity.
Andrzej Wajda’s Man of Marble holds a meta quality that still somehow feels radically different than Godard or Truffaut’s turns in Contempt and Day for Night. It attempts to channel a younger point of view — that of an ambitious student — with an overtly political agenda. Agnieszka is an independent, fiery individual intent on making her thesis the way she sees fit. She’s prepared to go digging around in uncharted territory or at least in territory that has been off limits for a long time. That understandably unnerves her adviser and still, she forges on.
Everywhere she goes Agnieszka drags along her crew who utilize handheld cameras and wide-angle lenses, at her behest, just like American films. It becomes obvious that Birkut was hardly a political figure, instead contenting himself by using his hands to lay breaks and lay them well. He takes pleasure in his work with a big sloppy grin almost always plastered on his face. It was people like him who made Nowa Huta into the great city of industry that it was, and he became an emblem of that. The party monumentalized him and he became the man of marble to be lauded by all.
We’re used to getting our hands dirty in the thick of World War II, whether it is in the European theater or the Pacific, but very rarely do we consider the consequences that come in the wake of such an earth-shattering event. Things do not end just like that. There must be periods of rebuilding and rehabilitation. There is unrest and upheaval as the world continues to groan in response.
There are love scenes that are quiet, subdued, and truly intimate. In fact, it feels rather like Hiroshima Mon Amour where the camera lingers so closely on two figures in such close proximity. There does not have to be great movement or dramatic interludes because having two people next to each other should be enough. The historical context in itself seems to be enough. For that film, it meant Japan post-1945. For this one, it’s Poland after the clouds of war have lifted.
4 Star Films 