春闺风月

Two first-rate 1930s Hollywood comedies from Leo McCarey, both are Oscar's Best Picture nominees and THE AWFUL TRUTH notched his first Best Director win (GOING MY WAY 1944 would nab him a second). While RUGGLES OF RED GAP and THE AWFUL TRUTH aren't sourced from original materials, and have already been preceded by several celluloid adaptations, McCarey's quick-witted comedic sensibility and low-fidelity to scripts ensure that they're not rip-offs. There is a genuine lightness and sophistication that distinguishes McCarey's comedies from his peers, and what is more precious is that he rarely overcooks its frivolous fodders. RUGGLES OF RED GAP starts as a parody deriding the savagery of the New World. The knee-jerking reaction from British valet Marmaduke Ruggles (Laughton) about the United States is "the land of slavery". But soon the joke boomerangs on him as he is blithely and summarily sent away to serve his new master, the nouveau riche American millionaire Egbert Floud (Ruggles, who can brilliantly turn gregariousness into a roisterous nuisance) after his current master Earl of Burnstead (an understatedly aloof Young) gambles him away in a poker game. Talking about slavery, a gentleman's gentleman also doesn't have any say in his own future employment. Much to his wife Effie's displeasure (Boland, fighting a losing battle with surprising gusto and gumption), Egbert is a rollicking philistine preferring checkers and boozing over haute couture and art. So she simply wishes the presence of Ruggles can infuse a certain gentility into him. But what ensues is actually the opposite. It is Egbert who drums liberty and equality into Ruggles's mind, urging him to discard formalities and seizing the day, especially when they return from the Continent to the Flouds' (ficititous) hometown Red Gap, in the profound West. In time, Ruggles will eases from a fish out of water into a beloved fixture of the town, sharing a romantic spark with Mrs. Judson (Pitts), a widowed cook. Eventually, he declines the offer of resuming his service for Earl of Burnstead and stays in the land of freedom, earning his independence as a restauranteur in Red Gap, but not before he reels off Lincoln's Gettysburg Address in its entirety before a gaggle of dumbfounded bumpkins. Laughton is in great form to keep emotion in check and his tactful finesse of handling humor and British snootiness is roundly on point. Here, McCarey's encomium of the United States's democracy reaches its crescendo. But 90 years later, viewed today, its wholesomeness also ineluctably trigger an epiphenomenon of disenchantment and non-fulfillment.

THE AWFUL TRUTH is a blue-chip screwball comedy without the rapid-fire exchanges, masterfully pairing Grant and Dunne as a posho couple undergoing their divorce proceeding, only to realize they do belong to each other in matrimonial bliss. It is a leisure class fluff playing up jealousy and suspicion which often undermine a happy union. Notable for the improvisational style that McCarey develops to extract laughter and modulate the comedic timing and the chemistry between his actors, the film unshackles its players from the stricture of a script and often asks them to think on their feet. Such spontaneity and unpredictability can create wonders. For example, Ralph Bellamy's countrified Oklahoma oilman Dan Leeson, a suitor of Dunne's Lucy Warriner, projects a more animatedly off-beat, sympathetically droll vibe (Who gives him the confidence to belt out with his off-key voice? You bet it is McCarey! And Dunne looks rather amusingly out of character in her reaction shots), which is fairly rare at then for a supporting role as an inconvenient third wheel. Poor Bellamy, he will lose the gal again to Grant three years later in Howard Hawks’s HIS GIRL FRIDAY (1940), another archetypal screwball comedy. Grant does a bit of physical comedy, proving that it never hurts for a leading man in a romance to be a bit buffoonish and not taking himself too seriously. Most significantly, and retrospectively, Jerry Warriner is the prototype of Grant’s massively appealing and charismatically enduring screen persona: his none-the-wiser mannerism, gentlemanlike panache, rejoinder-ready facility, and dreamboat goofiness, the whole package has already been assembled faultlessly. Dunne is as fabulous as ever, a pluperfect combination of a sophisticated lady and a glamour puss. Her gesticulations and utterances are so immaculate that she almost seems ethereal under the flattering silver lighting. When she slums it as a low class showgirl, the contrast is side-splitting (also, now one knows where the inspiration of Marilyn Monroe's infamous subway grate and white dress scene comes from). Among classic Hollywood leading ladies,, Dunne's capacity of effacing self-consciousness is of the first order. Then who could ever forget the thunder-stealing canine star Mr. Smith (played by Asta aka. Skippy)? A fox terrier as the subject of the Warriners’s tug of love, who does some jaw-dropping high-wire acts has been unparalleled then. As for McCarey, he squares away a winsome finale just when the comedy of errors starts to wear thin. All Jerry and Lucy need is a little push and two communicating bedrooms sharing a creaky door is just an ingenious wheeze to cinch that. Only an awful truth is that, reportedly by his own account, McCarey’s more impactful and weightier drama MAKE WAY FOR TOMORROW, released in the same year and tanked in the box office, would’ve been a worthier picture to win him a golden statuette in a fairer world, which has still been eluding us obstinately.

referential entries: McCarey’s MAKE WAY FOR TOMORROW (1937, 8.3/10), GOING MY WAY (1944, 7.1/10); Howard Hawks’s HIS GIRL FRIDAY (1940, 7.7/10); George Stevens's PENNY SERENADE (1941, 7.0/10); Preston Sturges's THE LADY EVE (1941, 7.9/10). Title: Ruggles of Red Gap Year: 1935 Genre: Comedy, Romance, Western Country: USA Language: English, French Director: Leo McCarey Screenwriters: Walter DeLeon, Harlan Thompson, Humphrey Pearson based on the novel by Harry Leon Wilson Cinematography: Alfred Gilks Editor: Edward Dmytryk Cast: Charles Laughton Charles Ruggles Mary Boland Zasu Pitts Roland Young Leila Hyams Maude Eburne Lucine Littlefield Leota Lorraine James Burke Clarence Wilson Dell Henderson Rating: 7.2/10

Title: The Awful Truth Year: 1937 Genre: Comedy, Romance Country: USA Language: English Director: Leo McCarey Screenwriter: Viña Delmar Based on a play by Arthur Richman Cinematography: Joseph Walker Editor: Al Clark Cast: Irene Dunne Cary Grant Ralph Bellamy Alexander D’Arcy Cecil Cunningham Esther Dale Molly Lamont Joyce Compton Rating: 7.5/10