Mr. & Mrs. Smith (1941)

A Hitchcock slapstick comedy... fascinating. Hitchcock's only comedy... I can kind of see why. Having said that, the movie wasn't un-funny, it just didn't live up to my slapstick expectations. It kept falling short. Carole Lombard is fantastic with slapstick (Nothing Sacred), but there wasn't enough for her to do here.

When we meet Mr. and Mrs. Smith (Carole Lombard and Robert Montgomery) they are holed up in their bedroom. One of the rules of their marriage is, "You are not allowed to leave the bedroom after a quarrel unless you've made up," and they had a fight two days ago. While the help watches for them to emerge and Mr. Smith's law firm panics over his absence, Mr. and Mrs. Smith finally reconcile, agreeing that their rules for marriage have once again helped them to trust and love each other. Before Mr. Smith leaves for work, though, Mrs. Smith reminds them of their "no lying" rule, and asks Mr. Smith to honestly tell her whether he would marry her all over again. Mr. Smith very naively answers that although he loves her, if he had it to do all over again, he would hold onto the single life. Oops.

Upon arriving at work, Mr. Smith is then visited by a lawyer come to tell him that, guess what, his marriage license isn't valid. It turns out all people who got married in 1937 in Nevada with an Idaho license are not really married and that "it'd be better if everybody kind of got married again...to be on the safe side." Oops again. Mr. Smith is kind of excited about the idea of dating his wife again and doesn't seem to plan to tell her right away. The lawyer happens to be a family friend of his wife, though, and stops by to see her next. Mrs. Smith's mother is horrified, demanding that her daughter not spend another night with her husband until things are righted. Mrs. Smith is convinced that, despite the morning conversation, of course her "husband" will whisk her off to City Hall that very night after dinner. Otherwise: scandal.

But, the dinner doesn't live up to expectations, and there is no proposal. Instead, Mr. Smith tries to lure his "wife" into the bedroom. Horror! Mrs. Smith tells him what she knows and accuses him of having tried to use her "and then throw me away like a squeezed lemon." Mr. Smith is banished to a room at the men's club, and Mrs. Smith decides that maybe she would like to date other men. Mr. Smith spends the rest of the movie trying to win his wife back. At one point he even tells her, "From now on we're just friends." Her response:"Not necessary."

The favorite scene for both me and David involved Mr. Smith pretending to be deep in conversation with a pretty lady seated near him in a restaurant. Not only is his wife not jealous, but the pretty lady eventually turns around and notices the creep pretending to whisper in her ear. The scene below was pretty funny, too:
So all in all, only two stars, but I would probably watch this again, and I think all Hitchcock fans should be aware of his venture into slapstick.

Flying Down to Rio (1933)

Ah, movies from the thirties. This is what I should be watching more of. Roger (Gene Raymond) is the conductor of a band and quite a player. When he spots Belinha (Delores Del Rio) winking at him from her table during a performance, it doesn't take him very long to leave the conducting to Fred (played by Fred Astaire) and sweep her up into his arms for a dance. News travels fast throughout the hotel. When the first comment, that Belinha, the niece of a wealthy Brazilian woman, is dancing with a musician, eventually reaches Belinha's aunt, the comment has run through the rumor mill and turned into "Belinha is dancing with a gigolo." The aunt rushes down to the dining room to put an end to the dance, and a romance/battle of words has begun. I was loving the movie... the first pairing of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, funny banter, amazing hats...

I was so happy... until I got to the spanking and the racism, all of which happened within a span of about five minutes. I will explain:

The spanking: Belinha needs to get home to Brazil fast. Her father needs her. It just so happens that Roger is a pilot, and that he and the band already happen to be going to Rio to play at the opening of a new hotel there. Roger convinces Belinha to fly in his two person plane (although he at first doesn't tell her he is the pilot and disguises himself in his flying gear so her aunt will let her go with him). Belinha is perfectly happy to discover that Roger is the pilot, but when Roger has to make an emergency landing on what they believe to be a remote desert island, all turns sour between them. Roger makes his engine trouble last by purposely losing an essential hose. Then he plays romantic music to get Belinha to make out with him. And then... she says something along the lines of, "No no no...I cannot do this...My family has arranged a marriage for me...I am engaged...We must never see each other again." Roger doesn't take well to Belinha's protest, Belinha slaps him, and then he throws her over his knee and spanks her a whole bunch of times reprimanding her for telling him off. Needless to say, when they have to spend the night on the island, she stays far away from him.

The racism: The morning after the spanking, Belinha looks into the trees and sees four or five black men looking back at her. She runs into Roger's arms screaming about wild men and cannibals. When Roger goes back to investigate, he finds out that she was not seeing cannibals, she was just seeing resort employees. They are in Haiti right next to a golf resort. This was supposed to be a funny joke.

The rest of the movie did have more entertaining moments, though. The hotel happens to be owned by Belinha's father, Roger happens to be friends with the fiance, and Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers dance, all while Roger and Belinha spar and can't take their eyes off of each other.

The best part of the movie was definitely when the band saves the hotel by creating the most spectacular opener ever: scantily clad girls dancing and doing acrobatics on the wings of planes in flight. At one point some of their clothes are even carried off by parachutes. At one point one girl almost plummets to her death and has to be caught by people on the plane below. Video below:

I also love the way in which Belinha's fiance finally gives her up...a parachute is involved. Two stars for silly acrobatics and fun. I could see myself watching this again, despite the horrifying parts.