It Happened One Night (1934)

Very funny!
Four stars, will watch it again.

An heiress runs away from home and accidentally falls in with a reporter who is desperate to get her story. Sound familiar? Maybe you saw the more popular Roman Holiday with Audrey Hepburn? Yeah, very similar.



Clark Gable is very funny and the writing is awesome. They have a hysterical fight about what exactly a piggyback ride is and their non-stop bickering/negotiations as they tour the country trying to get to New York City keeps the movie moving.

I don't have anything else to say that doesn't spoil some other aspect of the movie.

A classic in every sense of the world.

His Girl Friday (1940)

This movie has a scene I have to replay over and over again - Cary Grant chases Rosalind Russel around a desk and she transforms into his lover and partner again. I love this moment. I pretty much love the same moment in all my favorite romantic comedies - call it the "melt moment" it's the moment when one character melts the other's heart, melts through his or her resistance, and...amor vincit omnia, of course!


The Melt Moment - recreated for a still, of course...

It's the moment in Jerry Maguire when she says "you had me at hello" and it's the moment in Pride and Prejudice when they come upon each other unexpectedly - he's disheveled and wet, she's checking out his - holdings. The melt moment is the orgasm of the movie, and a good one can be enjoyed again and again. It's a good thing that DVDs don't wear out like VHS tapes, that's all I have to say.

The brilliant thing about this particular melt moment, though, is that Rosalind Russell's character doesn't even realize that she's melted. She thinks she's just giving in to one more little story...but in reality she's leaving her staid fiance and the life of a housewife in Albany to go back to her ex-husband and the newspaper business she loves.

What makes it great is not that you don't see it coming, it's that you do, and she doesn't, but it's still perfectly obvious that Cary Grant's character knows that he's won her back, and he is happy as only a man who has made his the love of his life return to him can be.

There are many other reasons to love this movie, let's count them!
1. Costumes, hers
2. Newspaper lingo and newspaper lifestyle - journalists were the TMZ of the 1920s so this is a bit like watching "The Springer Hustle" or "TMZ on TV" - except the newspapermen have a tiny tiny bit of integrity and a political angle (they want to get rid of the corrupt mayor).
3. Fiesty lady reporter who doesn't get tame at the end.
4. great character actors in all the little bit parts doing great bits
5. screwball plot twists on the level of A Fish Called Wanda

Five Stars, will watch again and again and again. And so should you.

Kiss Them for Me (1957)

Cary Grant stars in this story of a reluctant hero. So reluctant that he flees to San Francisco to find a girl rather than do his duty to the US Navy and regale the press with tails of heroism from the front lines. There are a lot of digs at Navy bureaucracy, reminiscent of Mother Goose, another great CG film.

Also, this is another film featuring Cary Grant the smooth-talking shyster (like Mr. Lucky). Almost as soon as he arrives on dry land he starts conning everyone in sight. His character fits the true definition of a player. And, of course, in all romantic comedies featuring a player, in the end the player must voluntarily "lose" the game for love. And in this case also go willingly back to war in the hopes of becoming a hero.

Ms. Mansfield

I first had watched this movie last year and I remember realizing me that Marilyn Munroe - THE iconic blonde bimbo - was not the first. I thought about that again later while I was watching Born Yesterday (in which Holliday plays a blonde ditz to perfection). But now that I look at the dates Munroe predates Mansfield - but Holliday predates them both.

Good to know, but does not detract for one minute from my enjoyment of this film. It is a broad, slapstick and wacky movie; very fun, although not at all perfect.

Will watch again, but not for another year!
Three Stars.