Icons of Screwball Comedy, Volume 1 (If You Could Only Cook / Too Many Husbands / My Sister Eileen / She Wouldn't Say Yes)
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Actor: Fred McMurray, Rosalind Russell, The Three StoogesBrand: Sony
DVD: Region Code 99
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language)
Format: Black & White, DVD, NTSC
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 336 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2009-08-04
Audience Rating: Unrated
Studio: Sony Pictures
DVD Reviews of Icons of Screwball Comedy, Volume 1 (If You Could Only Cook / Too Many Husbands / My Sister Eileen / She Wouldn't Say Yes)
DVD Review: An extremely mixed bag. Think twice.
Summary: 2 Stars
Every major Hollywood studio used to crank out at least one film /a week/, giving the avid movie-goer (or someone with nothing better to do) hundreds to choose from each year. You'd think that among those thousands of movies there'd be a lot of forgotten gems, and there are a few. (American Movie Classics used to show them. I'd never even /heard/ of "The Scarlet Empress" until AMC showed it.) But the reason most forgotten films have been forgotten is that they just aren't that good.
The low cost of DVDs has allowed the studios to reissue many of these forgotten films, including much of John Ford's early work, Bud Boetticher's westerns, unfamiliar Capra movies, and the like. (There are at least a dozen film noir sets.) Sets of films featuring a major star -- usually containing only one or two really good films -- are common, and popular. These sets show that there's a market for people who want to see good films -- or just ones that are merely "interesting" -- even if they're not in color and widescreen.
Two of Columbia's entries in this "sweepstakes" are two-disk sets of (supposedly) classic screwball comedies. Each disk has two films featuring a major actress -- in this case, Rosalind Russell and Jean Arthur. The films' quality varies from good to horrible, so you might want to think twice before buying, even if you like these actresses.
Let's get the Really Terrible One out of the way first. "She Wouldn't Say Yes" features Rosalind Russell as an overly rational psychiatrist who constantly warns her patients not to make impulsive decisions. When her path crosses that of a cartoonist whose supernatural "Nixie" character encourages people to act on their feelings of the moment, heads butt (literally) and sparks fly. The problem (as you might guess given that Russell plays a shrink) is that this is virulently anti-feminist film. A woman is supposed to fall madly in love with the first good-looking man who tries to sweep her off her feet (in this case, the insipid and well-forgotten Lee Bowman), and that a woman's only real satisfaction in life comes from being a wife and mother.
If this sounds bad on paper, you can't believe how terrible the realization on film is. I'm not going to waste your time or mine describing its utter stupidity and vulgarity, which includes Bowman repeatedly forcing himself on Russell's attentions (even invading her home), and eventually tricking her into marrying him. (There's also a Truly Strange scene in which Russell's secretary thinks she's watching two /men/ being married by a JP.) The one honest moment, when Russell admits that she doesn't want to get involved with men because she's seen too many women whose lives have been ruined by men, suggests that a decent light drama might have been made from this material -- but it wasn't.
The /only/ good thing about the film is Russell's professional performance. She treats this wretched material as if it were worth doing well. It is otherwise one of the very worst movies I've ever seen -- and I've seen a lot. Zero stars -- it's that bad.
"My Sister Eileen" (also with Russell, who reprised the Ruth Sherwood role in the Broadway musical) is nowhere nearly as bad, but only by comparison.
Ruth McKenny's stories about life with her sister (who, ironically, was killed in automobile accident, along with her husband, Nathaniel West, four days before the premiere of the play) might have been charming and amusing, but this adaptation isn't. It's a shallow, trite story about two semi-innocents in the big city, their (rather brief) struggles, all the strange people they meet, ** and how everything turns out right in the end. Even Russell's presence (she got an undeserved Oscar nomination, probably for her failure to receive a deserved one for "His Girl Friday") can't save it. The few funny moments occur only when Russell lets loose with a sarcastic zinger, which she excelled at.
The film is interesting in one respect -- it shows how much attitudes toward women have changed. Eileen is quite pretty, and men come on to her in a manner that is not only inappropriate, but crude and vulgar. There are a few spots where you think she's about to be -- shall we say -- molested. I found it sickening, and am surprised the Hayes Office didn't.
Don't let your enthusiasm for Rosalind Russell make you think this is a good film. It ain't. It's ultimately a pointless farce, with no sense that maybe, just maybe, some of this _might_ actually have happened, or worse, any _point_ -- ironic, satiric, or otherwise. It's one of those films that make you wish you hadn't wasted 90 minutes of your life on it. Two stars.
The Jean Arthur films are rather better. In "If You Could Only Cook", she teams with Herbert Marshall (the head of a major auto firm) to take butler/cook positions for a gangster (Leo Carillo -- "Oh, Cisco!") It treats the characters and their situations with some degree of intelligence, but it's ultimately substance-free. Two and a half stars.
The only good film is "Too Many Husbands", based on a Somerset Maugham play. As in "My Favorite Wife" (released just two months later), it follows the "Enoch Arden" plot, with a supposedly dead spouse returning unexpectedly -- and inconveniently.
The Grant/Dunne film is rightly considered a classic, and any similar story has to escape its shadow. "Too Many Husbands" doesn't, but it's worth seeing for the way the story plays out. Though Arthur winds up properly married to just one of the men, the ending is startlingly ambiguous, in a way that the Hayes Office could not have missed -- but did. Three stars.
The image quality varies from good ("Eileen", which is a bit grainy and flat-looking) to superb ("Husbands" and "Yes") which are beautifully photographed films in flawless transfers. Ditto for the clean, noise-free sound.
* The songs are outstanding, Lenny at his facile best. It's one of those rare cases where a musical is rather better than the play it's derived from. The same might be said for "High Spirits".
** Note how the "profession" of the prostitute who formally occupied the apartment is only hinted at. The Code would remain in effect for another 25 years.
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Description of Icons of Screwball Comedy, Volume 1 (If You Could Only Cook / Too Many Husbands / My Sister Eileen / She Wouldn't Say Yes)
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