La pícara puritana

This movie is exquisitely directed and acted. The "fourth wall" is gone; the movie rides so high and smart that we as audience can be subtly acknowledged throughout and made complicit in the production, while we continue to believe in the characters and care about what happens to them.

Much of the important dialogue is "throw-away" dialogue, in a sense. It's clear to the hearing, but lines are often spoken by the characters to themselves, for their own (and our) amusement, or delivered in very deftly choreographed "simultaneity," each speaker maintaining an independent point of view in rapid-fire repartee. Implications are understated. We are expected to expect the unexpected, to listen to every line.

The plot is composed like a piece of music. Each scene takes moment from the time-line established by the impending day and hour and minute at which a husband (Cary Grant) and wife (Irene Dunne) become legally divorced, and the movie ends at precisely the stroke of midnight which marks that moment. They clearly want each other back, but will they cleave together or cleave apart as the clock strikes midnight?

One extended "movement" of the movie lets Cary Grant charmingly undermine his wife's new relationship. In corresponding scenes later, Irene Dunne brilliantly plays a dumb floozie, pretending to be the husband's sister and demolishing in one evening his reputation and his prospects for marriage in respectable society. In these later scenes, in another of the movie's nice compositional touches, she does a reprise of a hoochie musical number performed earlier by a girlfriend of her husband's, and then falls into her husband's arms, apparently drunk. He gestures for her to look back and say goodnight to the horrified guests (and to us) as they do a wonderful little wobbly dance out the door, having burned their bridges behind them.

I found the opening few scenes of the movie unlikable, but with the entrance of Irene Dunne, the movie gets us on board. There's so much great understated visual and verbal double entendre (in the best sense) that I want to go back and see if there's more that I missed. In one scene, Cary Grant has brought to Irene Dunne's new fiancé the paperwork on a coal mine the divorcing couple still own. Interrupted by a visitor while advising the fiancé on where it would good to sink a shaft (har!), he explains that he and the fiancé (brilliantly played by Ralph Bellamy as a very successful bumpkin businessman) are transacting a business deal. The movie moves along briskly and doesn't play up the point, but we catch, for a fraction of a second, Irene Dunne squirming as she finds herself looking like the business transaction in question. The movie moves through moments like this quickly, with high respect for our intelligence and our capacity to get in on the joke.

Irene Dunne is luminous in what critic Andrew Sarris called one of the finest comic creations in film history. Dunne and Grant (this film launched him as a huge star) play a couple who hastily divorce and then alternately take turns trying to win each other back. Ralph Bellamy has the Ralph Bellamy role and plays it perfectly. This was the first of three great pairings between Dunne and Grant (My Favorite Wife and Penny Serenade being the others).

Dunne is THE great overlooked movie star - primarily because so many of her films were remade with the originals being taken out of circulation by the film studio (e. g. Show Boat, The Awful Truth, My Favorite Wife, Anna and the King of Siam, Cimarron, Back Street, Magnificent Obsession, Roberta, Love Affair among others). She was nominated for 5 Academy Awards for Best Actress (2 comedies- TAT, Theodora Goes Wild, a western - Cimarron, a character role - I Remember Mama, and a romance - Love Affair) but never won. I can only imagine that politics played a part in her not getting a special lifetime achievement Oscar later in her life (she was a strong Republican), after all Ralph Bellamy himself got one and his film career paled next to Dunne's.

Watch Theodora Goes Wild for another great Dunne Screwball performance.

Nominated for six Academy Awards (including Best Picture and Best Screenplay) and a huge box office hit when originally released, THE AWFUL TRUTH is a screamingly hysterical marital comedy that hasn't lost one iota of its punch in the seven decades since it's release. Irene Dunne is amazing in a layered performance that is both subtly affecting and side-splittingly funny - sometimes within the same scene! The scene in which Dunne masquerades as Grant's floozy, night club dwelling sister is one of the brightest highlights in film comedy history. Dunne received a well-deserved Oscar nomination for her inspired work in this film, which endures as a reminder of why she was one of Hollywood's top actress during the thirties and forties.

After flirting with success in SHE DONE HIM WRONG (1933), SYLVIA SCARLETT (1935), and TOPPER (1937), Cary Grant finally became a bonafide superstar with his performance in THE AWFUL TRUTH. Grant was an absolute master when it came to delivering one liners, and the prowess that he displays in the film's many moments of physical comedy is nothing short of phenomenal. Exceptional performances are also delivered by the rest of the cast (including Best Supporting Actor Oscar Nominee Ralph Bellamy), but the film's real scene stealer is the incredible canine performer Asta as Mr. Smith, which is easily the best performance by a dog ever! Leo McCarey won a much-deserved Academy Award for his frenetic direction of what is surely one of the all-time greatest comedies.

Jerry and Lucy, a mutually distrustful couple (Cary Grant and Irene Dunne) agree to divorce, only to end up sabotaging each other's attempts at new romances. The film is one of the best of the 'screwball comedies' to come out of the 1930s (and, like so many of the good ones, was based on a play). Grant is very good in his second major comedy (after 'Topper', 1937) and director Leo McCarey's film (for which McCarey won an Oscar) established him as a comic star (although apparently little love was lost between the two). Oscar-nominated Dunne is excellent. The scene she where meets the wealthy family of Jerry's current flame (a celebrity heiress) and pretends to be a brassy burlesque singer is priceless. Ralph Bellamy is also very good as Lucy's wealthy, earnest, 'aw-shucks' Oklahoma oil-man beau who lives with his Ma (Bellamy plays a similar character in the classic Grant comedy 'His Girl Friday', 1940). Like all the top comedies of the era, the clever, often rapid-fire script sparkles and the characters' delivery is impeccable. The film also co-stars Hollywood A-list dog 'Skippy', best known for his portrayal of Asta in the 'Thin Man' series . All in all, the film is a clever comedy that has aged well due to the quality of the script, and the talent of the director and the players.

Nothing in this movie makes sense, and it really doesn't matter. It succeeds with its self-assured anarchy and the charm of its stars.

Cary Grant, Ralph Bellamy and especially Irene Dunne are in top form. Dunne has been often overlooked for her comic talents. The contrast of her well-bred demeanor and inner wickedness is a delight -- such as when she does a burlesque dance for a parlor of society snobs. She always appears to be on the edge of laughter at the antics of Grant and the buffoonery of Bellamy. A wonderful nonsensical scene is of the musically skilled Dunne at the piano trying to sing "Home on the Range" with the hopelessly off-key Bellamy.

Grant is in the period of his career where he's not afraid of self-parody. He's at his best when he takes nobody and nothing seriously, and he's especially funny at tormenting the slow-witted Bellamy. And Bellamy is so good at playing dumb, you have to wonder if perhaps he's not really in on the joke. (Grant and Bellamy basically repeat their roles, with the same success, in "His Girl Friday," another first-rate comedy).

"The Awful Truth" is the masterpiece of Leo McCarey. There's really nothing else quite like it.