That Uncertain Feeling

A mild romantic comedy that's atypical of Lubitsch. Merle Oberon looks gorgeous. Her clothes are sensational. Melvyn Douglas is not credible as her crass insurance-executive husband. This is the man who taught Garbo to laugh in the same director's "Ninotcha" and was generally suave and somewhat iconoclastic. As the movie proceeds, he settles into a trick-playing husband not quite consistent with the man who've first met.

Burgess Meredith is sort of wasted as the annoying pianist Oberon meets in a psychiatrist's waiting room. (Alan Mowbry is hilariously dry as the analyst. And in some ways, this is a comment on psychoanalysis.) The Meredith character is the most interest. It is a very convincing study in absolute narcissism. He may be accomplished, indeed; but whether he is or not, he is his own greatest fan and protector.

There are swipes at modern art as well as those at analysis. In some ways, it's a little retrograde.

But it's beautifully shot and the design is fabulous. This is the New York City we'd all love to live in. And Oberon looks ravishing. Her performance is convincingly comic, too, though she is so match for Eve Arden in an all too small role.

Merle Oberon and Melvyn Douglas deal with "That Uncertain Feeling," a 1941 Ernst Lubitsch film based on a Sardou play. It's actually a remake of a silent Lubitsch, "Kiss Me Again." The film also stars Burgess Meredith and Eve Arden.

Jill Baker (Oberon) is married to a successful businessman, Larry Baker (Douglas), but after six years, the bloom is off the rose. She goes to a psychiatrist, where, in the waiting room, she meets an opinionated pianist, Alexander Sebastian (Meredith), who introduces her to the world of art and music. She becomes fascinated with the world of culture and with him. Before you know it, Oberon and Douglas are divorcing, and Oberon and Meredith become engaged.

The best scene occurs in the divorce attorney's office, when the secretary, Sally (Eve Arden) is asked to take a letter. In reality, she's supposed to witness Larry slapping Jill to help them get their divorce.

There are some nice things in this film, including the bright performances of the leads, particularly the beautiful Oberon, whose presence shone in many a film.

All in all, a disappointing Lubitsch, but Oberon's charm is quite special and always worth seeing.

It has some clever dialogue, but the plot you can see coming at you from a mile away, as it is a take on "the grass is greener". Plus there is only one really likable main character - Melvyn Douglas as Larry Baker.

After six years of marriage socialite Jill Baker is feeling quite bored. She is convinced by her equally bored Park Avenue socialite friends that she must simply go see Dr. Venguard, a psychoanalyst. Between Dr. Venguard, Jill's friends, and a complete narcissist she meets in Venguard's waiting room - Burgess Meredith as Sebastian, a pianist, she becomes convinced her marriage is on the rocks. This is all news to Larry who, although he does seem to eat and sleep the insurance business, is trying to build a better life for himself and his wife.

Before Larry knows what has happened, he is out and Jill wants to divorce him and marry the extremely tiresome Sebastian, whom she is convinced is a genius. He tells her so every day! Eve Arden as a legal secretary steals the show when she is asked about what is going on and her opinion. She says she sees it every day. Women taken care of in high style with no worries and nothing to think about but how unhappy they think that they are.

I wish I could make this review more inspiring, but the film itself is pleasant but uninspiring. No new ground is covered here, and the parts of it are greater than the whole. I can give kudos to Melvyn Douglas as the husband who thinks he is more clever at getting his wife back than he is, and to Burgess Meredith as somebody who thinks a great deal of himself as a musical genius but seems to have no visible means of support. Merle Oberon is lovely here and seems to have "that uncertain feeling" every step of the way. Events more than her own will seem to be propelling her forward in every instance.

A few great memorable lines, what could be heavy melodrama turned into a very light romantic comedy Lubitsch style, and probably worth your time if you run across it, but nothing to deliberately seek out.

Just a quick observation: It is my impression that the reason TUF is such a neglected gem appears to be the unwillingness of audiences, both in 1941 and to this day, to accept Lubitsch's melding of his own European style with the then-popular American 'screwball comedy' genre. I don't think either the ordinary American audiences who liked their comedy broader, or the European audiences - along with intellectual sophisticates in the US - ever understood, and certainly never accepted, this hybrid.

I think that's a shame, because I like the film, and find it both witty and hilarious, and abundantly blessed with the sort of intelligence and polish which makes Lubitsch films a sheer delight.

Loved "That Uncertain Feeling" (1941)! Here, a superb, substantive, yet oft-times simultaneously silly, screenplay (adapted from the stage) meets first-rate actors. (The beautiful Merle Oberon is at her comedic best.) What makes this a must-see film is the palpable pathos swirling just beneath it all. In lesser hands (actors and writers all) this might've fallen into the snidely melodramatic or the mildly comedic.

By the by, who says the feeling man is dead? The reviews give credence to the fact that-- whether in their teens, twenties, or, like me, in their fifties-- men enjoy romantic comedies as much as women. I suspect that any polls showing otherwise are eschew for the very reason that too many films today use a "straw man," where the male lead isn't much more than duplicitous, a nitwit, a heel (or all three). In "That Uncertain Feeling," a certain maturity and balance rules the writers. Sure, men AND women's flaws come to the fore, but as (or more)importantly, both sexes' attributes are on show, too, to boot. If the writer creates, equally, humorously offensive male and female characters, then it actually mirrors the real world while not playing partisan sexual politics. Do that and movie theatres will be swarming with women AND men, maybe like in days of old...like those when I, too, was young.