The Mating Season (1951)
A madcap, bright Paramount comedy, not quite screwball in its structure but a zany situation with a mother-in-law in inadvertent disguise and wife and an ex-girlfriend still after the husband. The centerpieces of the action are two or three big parties in a suburban styled apartment, a true 1950s dream in a way. The situation is so absurd and extended for so long it requires a huge effort to look the other way and just enjoy it, but heck, if you can, it's good for a lot of laughs, and a good time. And it's very 1950s innocent, which is cute and weird both, as when the husband curses out loud saying, "Oh, Milwaukee!" Haha. The writer, Charles Brackett, is again brilliant holding it together.
The apparent central character is played by Gene Tierney, and it's sometimes a festival of Tierney worship, both of her "figure" and her charm. And if she looks good, and she has tons of charm at the right times, she does not have what you might call plain old housewife cheer. And that's what she's intended to have, a kind of chipper Donna Reed, playing bad cook and awkward wife, very much in love with her husband (a dependable if unexciting John Lund). Tierney is the key problem beyond the absurdity of the plot, which is expected. I know there are those who think she can do no wrong, but you might be struck with her limitations here. When she is cool, or simply lovely, she's great. When she is the ditzy and perky "girl" she's strained and almost terrible. Which is probably good in some other sense--who wants ditzy chipper girls, anyway? But here that's her job.
The real central character is the mother in law, played with usual panache and worldly humor by Thelma Ritter. She saves all her scenes beautifully. Tierney's mother appears as well, played with expected upper crust nerve by Miriam Hopkins. It's inevitable that the two older women meet, and the fact this is happening without Tierney knowing what is happening (at first) is both the humor and the strain.
One repeating irritation for me is the device comedies like this use where the audience knows something the characters do not. But there has to be some sense of how this could actually be true. It's sustained too often by having someone start to tell someone else the truth, and then they don't, either because of interruption, or because they just decide not to. Even though they really have to.
But once you get used to this outlandishness, and see some other threads in the increasingly complex plot, you appreciate what is happening. The second half avoids some of the overt silliness of the first half, and it becomes a "sophisticated" comedy (which Brackett is known for--after all, he just finished writing "Sunset Blvd.") and it gets better and better. By the end, I was so happy for everyone I forgave the movie its flaws. The laugh ends up on me. Check it out!
A madcap, bright Paramount comedy, not quite screwball in its structure but a zany situation with a mother-in-law in inadvertent disguise and wife and an ex-girlfriend still after the husband. The centerpieces of the action are two or three big parties in a suburban styled apartment, a true 1950s dream in a way. The situation is so absurd and extended for so long it requires a huge effort to look the other way and just enjoy it, but heck, if you can, it's good for a lot of laughs, and a good time. And it's very 1950s innocent, which is cute and weird both, as when the husband curses out loud saying, "Oh, Milwaukee!" Haha. The writer, Charles Brackett, is again brilliant holding it together.
The apparent central character is played by Gene Tierney, and it's sometimes a festival of Tierney worship, both of her "figure" and her charm. And if she looks good, and she has tons of charm at the right times, she does not have what you might call plain old housewife cheer. And that's what she's intended to have, a kind of chipper Donna Reed, playing bad cook and awkward wife, very much in love with her husband (a dependable if unexciting John Lund). Tierney is the key problem beyond the absurdity of the plot, which is expected. I know there are those who think she can do no wrong, but you might be struck with her limitations here. When she is cool, or simply lovely, she's great. When she is the ditzy and perky "girl" she's strained and almost terrible. Which is probably good in some other sense--who wants ditzy chipper girls, anyway? But here that's her job.
The real central character is the mother in law, played with usual panache and worldly humor by Thelma Ritter. She saves all her scenes beautifully. Tierney's mother appears as well, played with expected upper crust nerve by Miriam Hopkins. It's inevitable that the two older women meet, and the fact this is happening without Tierney knowing what is happening (at first) is both the humor and the strain.
One repeating irritation for me is the device comedies like this use where the audience knows something the characters do not. But there has to be some sense of how this could actually be true. It's sustained too often by having someone start to tell someone else the truth, and then they don't, either because of interruption, or because they just decide not to. Even though they really have to.
But once you get used to this outlandishness, and see some other threads in the increasingly complex plot, you appreciate what is happening. The second half avoids some of the overt silliness of the first half, and it becomes a "sophisticated" comedy (which Brackett is known for--after all, he just finished writing "Sunset Blvd.") and it gets better and better. By the end, I was so happy for everyone I forgave the movie its flaws. The laugh ends up on me. Check it out!