Fast Fiction

Well, one of the things about being sick is that I have watched more movies on TV in the past three days than I think I have in three years.

Here’s a little rundown and some recommendations:

The Lady Eve - Barbara Stanwyck and Henry Fonda. Directed and written by Preston Sturges. Great comedy caper where Barbara is from a family of card sharps and she fleeces Henry Fonda on a cruise ship and then goes back again to break his heart. Surprisingly sexy for 1941.

The Man Who Knew Too Much - James Stewart and Doris Day. Directed by Alfred Hitchcock. A classic. James & Doris are traveling in Northern Africa when they are mistaken for spies and their son is kidnapped. They chase the kidnappers to London where they try to piece together why their son is being held. Nicely crafted and intimate, more lighthearted than most other Hitchcock movies.

Lover Come Back - Doris Day, Rock Hudson and Tony Randall. Directed by Delbert Mann. Screwball farce. Doris & Rock work for rival ad agencies. Rock attempts to seduce Doris in order to keep her from getting a spurious advertising client. Doris displays a collection of impossibly ugly hats in this movie but the interplay between them all is marvelous.

The Bachelor and the Bobby Soxer - Cary Grant, Myrna Loy and Shirley Temple. Directed by Irving G. Reis. Teenaged Shirley gets a crush on a painter, Cary, and Myrna, a judge, sentences him to date her until she looses interest. Not terribly inspired. But I love Cary Grant.

Gambit - Michael Caine and Shirley McClaine. Directed by Ronald Neame. Michael hires Shirley to help him gain access to a rich art collectors apartment as she looks exactly like the collector’s dead wife. It’s an interesting caper, but the relationship part of it fell a little flat.

Midnight Lace - Rex Harrison, Doris Day and Myrna Loy. Directed by David Miller. Doris is an American married to a British businessman when she starts getting threatening phone calls and everyone thinks she’s making it up to get attention from her husband. Nice twists. Doris screams and is off her rocker most of the movie, kind of helpless and all that, but I found it nicely done.

Mrs. Dalloway - Vanessa Redgrave, Natscha McElhone, Michael Kitchen and Alan Cox. Adaptation of Virgina Woolf novel directed by Marleen Gorris. Nicely done though a little ponderous tale of Mrs. Dalloway throwing a party. I saw The Hours when it came out and like it as well.

Of all of these, I’ve only seen The Lady Eve before and The Man Who Knew Too Much. I’m glad that TCM was so cooperative to put on good movies to distract me for a few days.

I’m going to try to go to the office tomorrow. My mother arrives tomorrow evening for a 10 day stay.