Now Over 5500 Reviews and (near) Daily Updates!

WELCOME! Use the search engines on this site (or your own off-site engine of choice) to gain easy access to the complete MAKSQUIBS Archive; more than 5500 posts and counting. (New posts added every day or so.)

You can check on all our titles by typing the Title, Director, Actor or 'Keyword' you're looking for in the Search Engine of your choice (include the phrase MAKSQUIBS) or just use the BLOGSPOT.com Search Box at the top left corner of the page.

Feel free to place comments directly on any of the film posts and to test your film knowledge with the CONTESTS scattered here & there. (Hey! No Googling allowed. They're pretty easy.)

Send E-mails to MAKSQUIBS@yahoo.com . (Let us know if the TRANSLATE WIDGET works!) Or use the Profile Page or Comments link for contact.

Thanks for stopping by.

Tuesday, July 25, 2017

THE LAW AND THE LADY (1951)

Falling somewhere betwixt Wilde, Maugham, Coward & Douglas-Home, playwright Frederick Lonsdale gently plied similar comic angles of Upper Crust Brits, as in ON APPROVAL and THE LAST OF MRS. CHENEY (this one’s original title). APPROVAL has the better gimmick (a trial marriage farce), but CHENEY’s setup nicely recalls Lubitsch’s TROUBLE IN PARADISE/’32 as a romantic pair of unmarried con-artists fleece the rich till a third-wheel romance turns serious. (With a gender switch so it’s two men/one woman.) An Early Talkie with Norma Shearer in ‘29, it was remade in ‘37 on Joan Crawford*, and now (third time’s the charm?) as a rare appropriate post-war vehicle for fast-fading Greer Garson. If only the execution were brighter. Michael Wilding is deft & charming as her confederate, playing butler to their nouveau riche quarry, while newcomer Fernando Lamas already shows his odd repellent arrogance & sexist stance as the unexpected rival. Even with a gabbled ending, it’s amusingly worked out, but producer Edwin H. Knopf, a specialist in classy snooze-fests, directs for the first time in a couple of decades and brings little to the party. One well-composed shot and one imaginative trick edit (a couple of jump cuts!) in the whole pic. Garson has to work thru an unbecoming brunette look, but largely pulls it off, keeping the insufferable noblesse oblige to a minimum. Tolerable stuff.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *Someone @ M-G-M must also have noted the parallels, getting TROUBLE’S Samson Raphaelson on that 1937 script.

DOUBLE-BILL: To see what Wilding could do with this sort of thing, try to find Alex Korda’s superb ‘48 version of Oscar Wilde’s AN IDEAL HUSBAND, with Wilding leading a scrumptious cast. An unknown gem, miles ahead of the 1999 adaptation.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Doesn't the title make this sound like a Western? Where the heck was market research?

No comments: