Jean Arthur at her Jean Arthurist in a Preston-Sturges-penned screwball comedy deftly directed by Mitchell Leisen. Edward Arnold delights as leading New York banker J.B. Ball, and a third-credited (below the title) young Ray Milland charms and riffs beautifully off Arthur’s unstoppable comic energy. A lesser-known screwball comedy, and a dammed fine one.
Pre-Code sexual frankness. Heroine played intensely by Ruth Chatterton is a liberated woman (in 1933) running a factory. Picture tries to have it both ways: female company president is sexually liberated but predatory—a female Harvey Weinstein. Oh, but she’s also vulnerable and we root for her. Oh, but maybe she just needs to be dominated by strong willed George Brent. Oh, but when she throws her career away for him, he flies her to that meeting in New York to…
The Citizen Kane of action movies. Makes Die Hard look like My Dinner With André.
I’d forgotten how briskly this unfolds, how meticulously it reveals its narrative layers, how memorable the action and dialog still is (and how it plays the audience like a fiddle), the crisp logic and unstoppable trajectory of the sci-fi premise (inspired by the works of Harlan Ellison) that drives the whole thing, the perfectly controlled practical effects, how freakin’ great Arnold is in this role he was born to play (even the woodenness of his acting works for him, here,…
