RKO step out on a prestige romantic drama and we step into something that we'd rather hadn't, unfortunately. As the title suggests, this is a soppy and now unintentionally humorous tale, in which Hepburn loves conductor Boyer (a disparate thespian pair if ever there was one), who loves hitting the bottle. Since this drama is post-code, she doesn't do the decent thing by joining him in a life of enlightened inebriation.
Despite the adult subject matter the dialogue - Hays approved = unremittingly boring - is singularly unworthy of such exceptional leading talent, to the extent of which one gets the feeling that Hepburn was cast out of a hat and in order to meet studio quotas.
In the end of course, it's Katy that commands the film a complete viewing today, as opposed to the other way round. Beyond this star pairing and the routine but elevator-tolerable scoring efforts of Max Steiner, in the middle of a particularly prolific period, the only other thing this film has going for it unfortunately is the frequent threatened slides into dramatic camp.
Despite the adult subject matter the dialogue - Hays approved = unremittingly boring - is singularly unworthy of such exceptional leading talent, to the extent of which one gets the feeling that Hepburn was cast out of a hat and in order to meet studio quotas.
In the end of course, it's Katy that commands the film a complete viewing today, as opposed to the other way round. Beyond this star pairing and the routine but elevator-tolerable scoring efforts of Max Steiner, in the middle of a particularly prolific period, the only other thing this film has going for it unfortunately is the frequent threatened slides into dramatic camp.