Liebe zu viert

OK! This is not the great hidden screwball masterpiece. The screwy cleverness is pretty obvious, but it's still funny. The story is adequate enough to keep the laughs coming with the right cast. I won't bother too much with the details because you'll get the idea pretty quickly. This is the right cast however and they keep the laughs coming.

For me the highlights are the scenes with Errol Flynn and Rosalind Russell. Russell has always been great as a comedienne and she delivers here as well, but Flynn is a revelation. Like Frank Morgan and Walter Pidgeon before him, he is the guy who not only can, but will, sell refrigerators to the Eskimos. When he turns the charm on Russell it's like being with that cousin who got you into network marketing.

The final act gets the ensemble (de Havilland,Flynn, Knowles and Russell) colliding together like bumper cars with Justice of the Peace, Hugh Herbert misdirecting traffic. He may have delivered the ultimate screwball line ever with "Children, please don't fight! There'll be time for that after you're married."

Realistically, it's obvious why the suits would not let Flynn take this direction, he was the king of swashbucklers and this would have weakened the brand. However, this movie shows what he could have been. As a screwball lead he had charm, athleticism, comic timing, sexy looks and a great voice, but so did Grant, Barrymore and Cooper and others and they were kind enough to leave the pirate market to him. A loss but I'll console myself with another hundred views of Captain Blood.

In this film, Errol Flynn plays a publicity man and ex-newspaper editor, Patric Knowles plays the owner of a newspaper, Rosalind Russell a star reporter and Olivia DeHavilland plays...well,...an idiot. While I could try to explain the plot as well as how all these characters come together in the film, I'd rather not--as the film is a super-frenetic mess. I am a huge fan of Errol Flynn as well as Olivia DeHavilland, so it came as quite a surprise that I enjoyed this film as little as I did. The biggest problem was that despite all the star power and the direction of the great Michael Curtiz, the overall effort is pretty awful and is only saved by a few moments here and there (provided mostly by Flynn and Walter Connelly). The stars and script try too hard--making the film very shrill and pushy. This is because the film is too high-paced and the script too busy--often resulting in all the main actors talking loudly over each other (not a fun experience at all). Now SOME films with these qualities work (such as MY GIRL Friday or BRINGING UP BABY), but this one does not because the script is poor plus Miss DeHavilland is cast in one of her worst roles ever. While Miss DeHavilland was wonderful in roles in such notable films as CAPTAIN BLOOD and GONE WITH THE WIND, here she plays against type. Instead of the usual sweet character, here she plays a ditsy dame and it just never works and seems, like the rest of the film, very forced. Katherine Hepburn could pull this off, DeHavilland could not.

The bottom line is that the stars of this film made much better films and you should see them instead. In particular, Flynn, Knowles and DeHavilland all appeared in one of the greatest films of the era, THE ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD. So it's obvious with better direction (sorry, Curtiz just doesn't have it here, though he was usually a wonderful director--particularly in romances and adventure films) and writing this SHOULD have been a lot better considering the money Warner Brothers spent to bring all these stars together.

'Four's a Crowd' could have been a great film, and should have been a great film. With a cast like Errol Flynn, Olivia De Havilland and Rosalind Russell and a director like Michael Curtiz, 'Four's a Crowd' promised much.

While not a terrible film, far from it, the promise wasn't completely lived up to due to try-too-hard execution. There are strengths in 'Four's a Crowd'. It looks good, very nicely shot in black and white and attractively mounted. The music suits well and pleasant to hear in its own right. The script does have its funny moments, especially in the first fifteen minutes and the ending's a good surprise.

Most of the cast do a good job. Flynn does show a charismatic, witty and easy-going flair for comedy, while Russell blisters in her best moments. Walter Connolly is amusingly eccentric, and Patric Knowles looks more comfortable than usual.

Less good is De Havilland, who is cast against type as a ditz and is all childish annoyance and no charm. Curtiz's direction is uneven, good in some of his direction of the actors and in the first fifteen minutes but tends to lose control when the film gets busier.

The script's humour doesn't come consistently and lacks bite, due to being over-stuffed and over-cooked, a few parts a little repetitive. The story is too busy and has too many complicated schemes, hindered even further by the hurriedly frenetic pacing which makes the busiest moments borderline confused.

Overall, watchable and most of the cast do well but too over-stuffed and over-complicated, hence what was meant by try-too-hard execution. 6/10 Bethany Cox

Rosalind Russell, ace reporter, is peeved that her newspaper is being shut down by cub publisher Patric Knowles, inexperienced son of the original publisher. Knowles has recently fired crack editor Errol Flynn, who has in turn set himself up as a publicity agent for rich curmudgeons who need good press. Olivia de Havilland, lovely and playful granddaughter of one such grumpy millionaire, is romantically attached to the handsome Knowles—at least for the moment.

The plot of this rapid fire comedy follows our four stars round and round: Russell wants Knowles to save the paper, wants Flynn back on the job. Flynn and Knowles have an old rivalry and delight in scoring off of each other. De Havilland seems happy letting everybody love her for her grandfather's eight million dollars. How will it all shake out?

Walter Connolly pretty much steals the show as the grandfather, a wealthy eccentric whose great passion is the model railroad that dominates his back yard. Melville Cooper is also excellent as Connolly's butler and stationmaster; the two of them in their engineer caps, running the train controls from their crow's nest, are just hilarious.

Out of a great cast, Russell and Connolly are most familiar in this kind of a screwball comedy and probably come across best. Flynn and de Havilland, though, are fun to watch, too—Flynn shows a flair for comic antics like stealing sticks of butter from a dark kitchen, and Olivia looks like she's having a ball as her fun-loving character laughs and whoops it up in a way that the Maid Marian (or Melanie Wilkes!) never would have dreamed of.

Overall, the movie is never dull but never quite takes off—is it the complicated plot that prevents this picture from really hitting full speed? In any case, it's certainly entertaining, thanks to the great cast and solid Warner Bros. production.

Because I found watching 'Four's a Crowd' great entertainment (there were quite a number of scenes where I was laughing out loud) I was wondering why the film never reached the status of a classic screwball comedy - something if not as brilliant as 'My Man Godfrey' (1936) then at least like 'You Can't Take it With You' (1938) or 'Hands Across the Table' (1935). After all, 'Four's a Crowd' has some big stars, with Errrol Flynn demonstrating considerable talent as a comic actor and Olivia de Havilland and Rosalind Russell playing along with verve. Also, there are stalwarts such as Franklin Pangborn and Walter Connolly who normally as good as guarantee success. I have come up with one potential explanation for why the film is more or less forgotten today (30 user reviews as of late April 2022 is not a lot): The greatest screwball comedies all start out from fairly simple situations that lead to logical consequences, and they all focus on relatively few main characters. By contrast, the plot of 'Four's a Crowd' is overly convoluted. There is simply too much going on, with all those intrigues and attempts at double crossing. Also, it is almost an ensemble cast film, with Flynn, Havilland and Russell having practically equal screen time and Patric Knowles not much less. For all that, this is by no means a bad film. If you can spare one and a half hours, there are much worse ways to spend them than watching 'Four's a Crowd'.