Arise, My Love

Both Claudette Colbert and Ray Milland are superb in this brilliant war comedy drama in the shadow of the Spanish civil war and the Second World War. It was Claudette Colbert's own favourite among her films, and you'll understand some of its qualities better when you study the list of the script writers, one of whom was the young Billy Wilder. The dialog is brilliant all the way, there is any amount of eloquent scenes, and the romance gradually grows quite naturally with some skirmishes along the way. Walter Abel also gives one of his best performances as Claudette Colbert's employer, as he also gets his nose too far out into the business. Claudette Colbert is a journalist who goes to Spain to get out an American prisoner, who awaits his execution. That is Ray Milland, and the very first scene is perhaps the very best one, as Ray Milland sits in his cell waiting for his execution playing cards with a priest, while the firing squad is busy just outside, leaving one body just outside Ray Milland's window in a shadow that won't go away. Add to this the romantic music of Victor Young, which adorns many of the long romance scenes, while gradually the comedy transcends into a major war drama, with some curious coincidences on the way: on the train to Berlin, both Ray and Claudette being together on it, the emergency break is pulled just as the war breaks out, and when Ray and Claudette decide to leave all career thinking behind and go back to America to embark on a normal life, their ship gets torpedoed, and the war starts for real.

It's a delightful and innovative comedy all the way, eloquently mixed with some very serious business, and the film is so positive and edifying, that it would be worth returning to it every once in a while - it's the perfect emergency readiness film.

Claudette Colbert stated that Ernst Lubitsch was "by far" her favorite director, but this film, directed by Mitchell Leisen, she stated to be her favorite movie. Released in 1940, it marked her fourth collaboration with Leisen (he'd co-directed without credit sequences of the 1932 Cecil B. DeMille production "Sign of the Cross," the movie which made Claudette a star), the man who directed her in more films than any other director.

One can see why Claudette liked this film the best: it gave her a meatier role than the parts she'd played over the preceding several years. Ever since 1934's "It Happened One Night" Claudette had mostly done comedy films. This isn't a complaint – the lady had better comedic timing than just about any other actress in Hollywood. But here in Arise My Love she was able to cover the gamut of her talent, from comedy to drama, something she hadn't gotten to do since the Pre-Code years (check out her 1933 "Torch Singer" for an example). Indeed it's this mixture of genres which seems to offset the critics of today. For Arise My Love answers the unasked question: "What if Casablanca had been done as a screwball comedy?"

Produced so in-the-moment that the script was rewritten daily to encompass the latest events, Arise My Love was released in 1940 and covers the hectic events of one year, starting in the summer of 1939. Claudette is Gusto Nash, a no-nonsense newspaper reporter who dreams of scoring big headlines. She frees Tom Martin (Ray Milland), a Nazi-hating pilot who's imprisoned on death row in Spain, part of the Liberty battalion of US soldiers who helped that country fight the encroaching Nazis (and lost). The first thirty minutes of this movie are 100% action, with escape via land and air. After this the film moves into screwball territory, with Tom hot for Gusto and Gusto trying to reign in her feelings; she wants to focus on her career. After this we move into drama; together at last, Gusto and Tom are soon separated, Gusto to cover the Nazi menace in various points of Europe, Tom battling the Germans in the Polish air force.

Everything hangs together despite the mixing of genres. If I had any complaints it would be that the film ends a bit too weakly, Claudette delivering a passionate soliloquy to a silent Milland. Doubtless this gung-ho speech was intended to stir patriotic fervor in the audience of the day, but now, decades after WWII, it seems a bit anticlimactic. Indeed, the opening thirty minutes of the film are more climatic than the ending. But there are a lot of enjoyable moments. Claudette and Milland have good chemistry and both get a chance to display comedic and dramatic skills.

The Sturges/Brackett script is up to the level of their previous Claudette productions ("Bluebeard's Eighth Wife" and "Midnight"), though, again, they don't get as much chance here to unleash their trademark comedy. Leisen's direction is good, too, as is the cinematography and production values. Claudette and Milland traipse about Europe in a variety of locales, from Paris to countryside inns deep in France; all of it done on a set, all of it featuring that Classic Film glamor.

Released well after the enforcement of the puritanical Code, Arise My Love still gets in a few surprises – first, there's a delightful scene where Gusto comes up to Tom's room to snap his photo for her article. Tom however thinks she's coming up for sex. This develops into a scene filled with hilarious misunderstanding, with Gusto arranging the setup and Tom becoming increasingly bewildered: "So where shall we do it? How about the chair?" "What?" "Right – too conventional." All of it like "Three's Company," but still very funny. Also, shortly after this scene Gusto and Tom talk in a restaurant; Tom's pretending he's waiting for a (nonexistent) Swedish girl, but really he just wants to be with Gusto (who thinks she's just getting material for her article). There's a moment where Tom asks Gusto to pick out some flowers – flowers he pretends to be buying for the Swedish girl but are really for her. As Tom purchases the flowers she picked out, Gusto looks at him with a dawning understanding that turns into a look of longing – and then, very abruptly, she puts her pen in her mouth. Dr. Freud calling!

Despite Claudette's preference for this film, it's never been officially released – not even on VHS. You'll need to scour the sordid world of online DVDR trading/sales to find yourself a copy, one which most likely will have been sourced from a cable TV broadcast.

In the final analysis, a film is about cinematography. From the very beginning at the Spanish prison, extraordinary cinematography is used to an exceptional degree, and it continues through the film. There are minor exceptions, as with the file film of airplanes flying. More importantly, the film claims the obvious: The Spanish government in 1939 had more than casual leanings toward Berlin. The bombing of Guernica by the Nazi air force is testimony, here reinforced. Tom Martin (Ray Millard) says he had a pet rat in his jail cell named "Adolph." Spain's neutrality during World War Two is in question with Paramount Pictures, as it was in diplomatic circles. Of course, a 1940 movie about event of 1939 has the advantage of historical retrospect, yet the public actions of the Spanish government stand. Claudette Colbert as Agusta Nash is the career woman whose career comes before love, who puts her career before all. Her assignment as Special Berlin Correspondent is to tell of Hitler and his gang. A series of unpredictable events leads her to redefine her sense of patriotism. There are, in effect, many loves which must arise and spite the envious moon. Cinematography, historical theme, and some darn good acting all unite for an effective historical perspective on life at the beginnings of World War Two.

Mitchell Leisen was one of the few directors who could introduce tragedy into comedy and vice versa .The first part is absolutely dazzling.Incredible though it may seem ,it's full of unexpected twists,of fine lines ("it's my first execution" says the Padre /It's mine too" says the prisoner).The chemistry between Claudette Colbert and Ray Milland is perfect and their husband-and-wife act compares favorably with that of the actress as a "baroness ,her husband and her children" in "midnight" .The movie loses steam in its second part but it does show Mitchell's fondness for France .Unlike too many American movies,there are plenty of French words and the French speak French between them.I particularly like this sentence "Three sisters used to live in this country :Liberté ,Egalité Et Fraternité " as the German army is marching past the streets of Paris.This francophilia is also present in Leisen's "hold back the dawn" or "Frenchman's creek" .

The last third may be considered a propaganda one ,but many other directors (Hitchcock,Lang,Hathaway,Borzage etc) had theirs too,and Leisen's is certainly smarter than most of the others.Solomon's prayer (which provides the title) is to be taken literally.Augusta is a go-getter ,she plays the heroine just for the sake of fame .After the beautiful scene in the forest ,where the animals run for their lives ,she does arise .The scene in the Compiègne Car is as incredible as Marlene Dietrich as a gypsy entering an inn full of Nazis in "golden earrings" .But the Spanish extravagant tale had warned us:this is not to be taken seriously ,but in a way,it is.

An unusually constructed film which starts off like a screwball comedy albeit to the backdrop of both the recently-ended Spanish Civil War and newly-begun Second World War and finishes up as an interventionist call-to-arms against the global threat of Nazism.

I think it works, aided naturally by the writing of the justly celebrated screenwriting partnership of Wilder and Brackett, capable direction of Mitchell Leisen and especially the on-screen chemistry of the emerging Ray Milland and the established Claudette Colbert. You can almost picture the censor of the day's pencil hovering over some of the early scenes in the movie as they coyly play cat-and-mouse with one another, in particular one risqué exchange between the two stars with a double bed prominently featured in the background.

Walter Abel as Colbert's end-of-his-tether editor is rather clichéd but largely speaking, the parts of the lesser characters, such as Milland's two pilot chums and the hotel maid with family caught up in the confusion which add some shade and light to the main characters' motivations are well selected and portrayed.

I particularly appreciated the topicality of the depiction of very recent real-life events such as the sinking by German submarines of the cruise-liner Athenian taking Milland and Colbert back to the States and the montage of succeeding newspaper headlines documenting the at-the-time seemingly unstoppable march of the German Army.

Colbert later named this as her favourite of all her movies and I doubt that's just because the film ended up on the right side of history. It manages that tricky balancing act between comedy and drama in a contemporary setting and still finds room for an eloquent wake-up call to the rest of the world at its time of greatest need.