Movie Night: My Favorite Wife (1940)

After spending the weekend with the Taylors, I have come home with a pocketful of memories such as:

• Trying not to be dumped off my raft in the pool
• Picking blueberries
• Looking at BJ's awesome blue truck
• Experiencing a growing fondness for country-music
• Singing at the piano with Abigail playing
• Staying conveniently out of the way while Abigail and Daniel enjoy tete-tetes
• Watching fireflies
• Eating plums off the tree
• Playing badminton
• Being gifted with a whole bag of books to read this summer! (Thanks Goldberry! :)
• Laughing late into the night

And lots more. But one amazing thing we were introduced to this trip was the 1940 romantic comedy: My Favorite Wife.

I give you the plot, as described by Wikipedia:

After seven years, lawyer Nick Arden (Cary Grant) has his wife Ellen (Irene Dunne), missing since her ship was lost, declared legally dead so he can marry Bianca (Gail Patrick). It turns out however that Ellen was merely shipwrecked on a deserted island, and has been rescued. When she returns home, she learns that Nick has just left on his honeymoon with his second wife.

Dunne and Grant--cue the happy sighs

I love old movies, but I seldom have a chance to see them. Mostly because we don't own any. But that's a nuance. I laughed my head off all during this movie. The plot is just too absurd, the acting adorable, the ending perfect. I had always had the impression that Cary Grant was a heart-throb, dramatic, tall-dark-handsome sort of actor. Maybe he is in most of his movies (is he?) but in My Favorite Wife, Grant comes across as lovably confused and dithered.

Nick Arden (Cary Grant) does not love his new wife, Bianca, but after 7 years he figured it was time to remarry. His new wife, Bianca, is cold, haughty, beautiful, and affected. You've gotta feel for him, and no one can suppress an "Awwwww!" when Nick catches sight of Ellen in the lobby of the hotel he's just checking into with Bianca. It's adorable. And awkward for poor Nick. He's in ecstasies over finding his wife again after 7 years, but he's also just married another woman. So why doesn't he just tell Bianca his first wife has come back? Well, it's not quite that simple...and that's where the comedy comes in. I promise you'll laugh really hard.

That awful leopard robe! :D

Why I love this movie:

The good, old-fashioned, 1940's values. While a modern filmmaker might have had good chances to turn this into something scandalous, the directors of this film kept it funny, clean, and heart-warming. They played the awkward scenes of Nick having to hold two rooms at the hotel (one for Bianca, one for Ellen) lightly and playfully without going into all the things a modern movie might have.

The children in the film, too, are so cute and precocious, and at the end...well...I can't tell you. But it's very very heart-warming indeed. :)

Any Cautions?

The hotel manager comes to reprimand Nick for staging an intrigue in his hotel, obviously inferring that Nick is doing double-duty with two different women.

After Nick grows suspicious of the man Ellen was shipwrecked with for 7 years, Ellen pretends she is going to marry him after all, and leave Nick for good. (This is null and void, however, because all the time it was just a ploy to get Nick to assure her he stills loves and wants to marry her.) The classic values bit is played sweetly in the scene between "Adam" and "Eve" (the shipwrecked man and Ellen) when he asks Ellen to marry him and she replies: "I did not wait seven years only to lose my resolve in three days." :) *points for Ellen*

Quotables:

Ellen: "Oh, by the way, how was my funeral?"Ma: "Lovely. Doctor Blake preached a wonderful sermon."
Ellen: "Oh, I wished I'd been there."

Nick Arden: "I came here with my wife..hum...my bride, really. Now my wife, not my bride...my wife...why should I bore you with details?"
Hotel Manager: "I won't be bored."
Nick Arden: "Listen, it's just as simple as A,B,C."
Hotel Manager: "Don't tell me you got someone in B too?"

Nick Arden: (discussing with Ellen how to tell the children she's their mother and isn't drowned after all.) "Would it help if I wrote them a letter?
Ellen: "Oh, that would be nice, yes. 'Enclosed, please find your mother.'"

Nick Arden: (Making excuses as to why he wants to stay at the cabin with Ellen and the children instead of "thinking it over.") "I had a flat tire...I was just driving along and...ssssssss!"