La novia era él

Howard Hawks proves once again why he is considered to be the director's director. The story is fairly simplistic, but with the help of brilliant actors and ingenious dialogue he turned it into a masterpiece and a classic. And it's a damn funny movie, too.

I expected an explanation how the limey Grant got to join the French army, until the credits rolled and forced me to realise that he was meant to be genuine, native French. The good thing here is that Grant never in the least tries to act French, which is probably a good idea as it would have proved to be annoying in the long run. He merely wears a képi.

The chemistry between Ann Sheridan and Cary Grant is amazing, and Ann is so damn sexy. I particularly enjoyed her role as a strong yet sensuous woman, who, in contrast with many other female roles of the time, comes across as plenty fresh and modern.

The movie is a light-hearted comedy for the first half, and then suddenly turns into an almost Kafkaian nightmare for the rest. Grant really shows us his thespic stuff when he's battling being turned into a woman for bureaucratic reasons.

I'm giving this only nine points because I want to leave me some room for improvement. But it's a brilliant and very enjoyable movie, which is sadly underrated.

I've always liked this movie despite it having one VERY serious short-coming. You see, some dimwit decided to cast Cary Grant as a French Soldier and, to put it bluntly, he sucks at imitating a Frenchman. If only the producers had watched the movie Suzy (completed more than a decade earlier), they could have seen how silly Grant looks when he plays a French person. He has no trace of a French accent. If he had sounded like Pepe LePew, it would have been a vast improvement! So, provided you can get past this (and I'm sure many CAN'T), you are left with an intelligent little comedy about what happens when an American servicewoman marries a French officer and tries to bring him back to the states. As you may have guessed, this did NOT happen very often as nearly all American troops who married abroad were men marrying local ladies. And, because this is NOT the norm, one bureaucratic snafu after another prevent them from the supposedly easy task of immigrating with his new bride to America. Particularly noteworthy is Grant when he poses as a WAC! Although he was a handsome man, he was one scary looking woman!!

Although the film shows hundreds of American female military personnel stationed in Germany after World War II, apparently few were interested in the local men. According to Howard Hawks's "I Was a Male War Bride," only the male soldiers wed Europeans, and the military bureaucracy and red tape were stacked against American women marrying European men. With that premise, an American Lieutenant, Ann Sheridan, falls for Frenchman Cary Grant, and the couple resort to extraordinary ploys to both comply with and circumvent the rules to marry and bring Grant to the U.S. as Sheridan's "bride." Although Grant is about as French as Big Ben and looks as feminine in drag as Sylvester Stallone, Cary is Cary and brings charm and charisma to his improbable role of Captain Henri Rochard. Tough and sexy Sheridan is better cast, but the sum of the two stars exceeds either apart. Cary and Ann have chemistry and work well together in a plot that could have easily fallen apart with a less skilled team of actors and director.

Grant plays the patient and suffering spouse, who must endlessly explain that he is married to an American soldier and entitled to shelter and transportation in a system that does not recognize his gender as compatible with his situation. Throughout, Grant's face and body language speak volumes about the frustration of dealing with bureaucracy and filling in forms in triplicate. Although at times Sheridan seems oblivious to the depth of Grant's problems, her performance is fine, and she convincingly captures the transition from an initial loathing of to an eventual attraction to Rochard. Shot on location in post-war Germany, the black-and-white photography captures the beauty of the countryside and the devastation of the cities with documentary like precision. Hawks keeps the proceedings well paced, and, while rarely laugh-out-loud funny, "I Was a Male War Bride" and its megawatt stars provide excellent entertainment.

Captain Henri Rochard is assigned to work with Lieutenant Catherine Gates on a very serious mission. Tho initial problems between the two are rife, it's not long before the two of them fall in love and hastily arrange to get married. However a ream of bureaucratic red tape ensures the couple can not be together and with Catherine set to go back to America, there may be only one option, Henri will have to invoke a War Brides Clause in army regulations, with some rather zany results.

I Was a Male War Bride is not even close to being a poor film, it has many moments of hilarity and contains a last twenty minutes to savour, it is however un-fulfilling as a comedy whole and sags on far too many occasions. How much of this is down to the chemistry of the leads and off camera illness problems is open for debate, for both Cary Grant {Rochard} and Ann Sheridan {Gates} both suffered ill health during the shoot, while director Howard Hawks himself was to succumb to being unwell at an inappropriate juncture. Tho Ava Gardner was originally wanted for the role of Gates {something i feel would have been excellent, if still wishing for a more comedic actress}, Hawks went for the more brisk acting of Sheridan, tho a fine actress, she seems wrong here, not quite coping with the comedy interplay with her leading man, almost missing the comedic beat as it were. Grant himself was said to have praised the picture quite often, but he does look weary and often appearing to be on auto pilot during the more laborious sequences.

The film has many supporters, but i can't in my wildest dreams term this as a screwball comedy, perhaps i expect better from Grant and Hawks?, i mean after His Girl Friday, Bringing Up Baby and to a lesser extent, Monkey Business, my expectation for this one was always likely to be high, and of course viewing Sheridan as a great dramatic actress was meaning i viewed this one with suspicion from the off. I honestly feel the last twenty minutes saves the picture from being very average, the script perks up, and naturally a bit of gender confusion always raises a titter, tho the sight of Grant in drag looks more akin to Frankenstein's monster than the boys from Some Like It Hot!. It's more than worth a watch and it has guaranteed laughs dotted throughout, it just falls some way short of being a comedy classic in this viewers humble opinion. 6/10

I was wavering between awarding this movie a 7 or an 8, and have finally plunked for an 8 because a movie with Cary Grant in it has got to be truly horrible and an utter stinker to get anything below an 8.

This should make it pretty obvious what the best thing about this otherwise average film was. The chemistry between Grant and Sheridan is amusing but not engaging (not the way his verbal sparring with other co-stars like Katharine Hepburn and Rosalind Russell just sparkle right off the screen); the plot is contrived and the romance between the two main characters--Henri and Catherine--isn't particularly believable. (Grant and Sheridan fail at what Gable and Colbert did so well in 'It Happened One Night': making it believable and real and sympathetic that two characters at absolute loggerheads *could* fall helplessly in love.)

This doesn't mean that the film is *bad*. The first half of the movie is mildly amusing, with the bickering between the two main characters as they take a motorcycle trip to their destination. But the best part of it probably comes when Henri and Catherine get married (three times!), with all its attendant problems. It is Grant's perfect comic timing and adorable mien that makes the blatantly "please laugh now" moments genuinely funny. The look of resignation, anger, or suppressed annoyance on Henri's face as he repeatedly asserts that he is "an alien spouse" under the Congressional War Brides Act must be seen to be believed. And I dare anyone *not* to laugh when Grant cross-dresses. That is probably the best part of the film.

An average film without Cary Grant, a better one for having him in it, but definitely an average (if not poor) Grant film. If you want to introduce a friend to the charms of Cary Grant or to screwball comedy, you're better off with Bringing Up Baby or His Girl Friday. This one's probably for true Grant aficionados only.