BEFORE: Today's film was directed by Howard Hawks, who also directed yesterday's film, "Only Angels Have Wings" - but 10 years later. I don't try to organize my films by director, but sometimes it just happens that way.
THE PLOT: Captain Henri Rochard is a French officer assigned to work with Lieut. Catherine Gates. Through a wacky series of misadventures, they fall in love and marry. When the war ends, Capt. Rochard tries to return to America with the other war brides.
AFTER: This film is a bit of a snappier romance than "Only Angels Have Wings", and it doesn't suffer from that "Who, me/" syndrome, with a bunch of dialogue extenders. When we meet our hero and heroine, they've clearly had a go at a relationship before, and it didn't quite work out - so there's some contention between them, which not only feels natural, it seems realistic. When they have to work on another assignment, their proximity causes them to give it another try. I'd be curious to know some stats on how many relationships started this way after World War II - with female military personnel working side-by-side with male ones.
Together they've got to cross the (French? German?) countryside and find Mr. Schindler (the same one from "Schindler's List"? Nah, couldn't be) and convince him to work with the Allies instead of the criminal black market. At least their misadventures and travel problems give them something of a shared history, and they don't just fall in love because they're near each other. The more we see them do together, the more organic the relationship feels.
However, I couldn't take Cary Grant seriously as a Frenchman - he acts like an American and talks like a Brit, and doesn't seem French at all. The only thing worse than not hearing him speak French is hearing him massacre a few words in German.
Once the relationship is on, however, they have to contend with military red tape in getting their union approved, and then the final hurdle is getting Rochard to America as a "war bride". This is played mostly for laughs, as the script just naturally assumes that the U.S. military wouldn't be forward enough to consider the possibility of a "war groom", so he's got to travel and bunk with the ladies - only as a man he can't bunk with the ladies, so it becomes one big military Catch-22. And regulations prevent him from bunking with his wife, because she's a soldier, so he's stuck.
You'd think that the military would grant some form of leave to a soldier getting married, male or female, but no, then we wouldn't have this comic situation to deal with.
Also starring Ann Sheridan, Randy Stuart (last seen in "All About Eve"), Marion Marshall, Bill Neff.
RATING: 5 out of 10 haystacks
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