Leo McCarey (1937)

I wasn’t feeling well so might not have been in the right mood to enioy what seems to be generally accepted as a classic screwball comedy.  I found it surprisingly effortful.    It’s quite unfair to complain that the basic motor of the story – the courtship of an estranged, about-to-be divorced couple, with the man played by Cary Grant – seemed too familiar:  The Awful Truth preceded not just the screen version of The Philadelphia Story but Philip Barry’s stage play too.  Yet I couldn’t help feeling that, having seen The Philadelphia Story several times.  And, in spite of the distinguished names on the screenplay – the main credit is to Vina Delmar, other contributors included Sidney Buchman, Dorothy Parker and Alan Campbell – the plotting didn’t seem to me very inventive.  (The source material is a stage play by Arthur Richman.)

Grant was thirty-three when he made The Awful Truth and Irene Dunne, his co-star, was thirty-nine.  That’s not enough in itself to make them seem mismatched in age but she seems emotionally decades older than him.  Expert though she is, Dunne seems to have to work at being impulsive and irrepressible; and a good deal (more than half?) of the comic burden is on her shoulders.   Dunne is evidently enjoying herself but there’s a hint of condescension in her presence that seems to belong to the actress rather than the character.  Because Dunne doesn’t have the naturally high-strung magnetism of a Katharine Hepburn, Grant becomes the undivided centre of attention.  Of course he’s charming, funny and accomplished but you can see the mechanics of what he’s doing in a way that’s invisible when the material is completely transporting.   Ralph Bellamy plays, very well, his trademark role as the affable bore whom Dunne is intending to marry after her divorce from Grant has gone through.    I laughed most at the performance of one of the decade’s most reliable supporting players, Asta the dog (here in the role of ‘Mr Smith’).  A cameo from a cat in the final scenes is good too.  Leo McCarey won the Academy Award for Best Director.

15 December 2008