A Kiss in the Dark

This is not perhaps the BEST example of screwball comedy, but it has enough going for it that anyone looking for some light entertainment ought not be -too- disappointed! David Niven and Jane Wyman have a superb chemistry. Some of the scenes are laugh-out-loud funny, even when (as, for example, the scene with the animal trap in the park) one can easily guess what will happen next. And there is a very satisfying ending. Recommended!

This film is a pleasant diversion that might be described as cute.

Eric Phillips (David Niven) is a neurotic pianist who lives life on a treadmill, surrounded by a retinue dedicated to keeping him on the concert circuit, earning money. When his financial manager invests some of his income in the purchase of an apartment building called the Cleopatra Arms, Eric gets a visit from a man named Horace Willoughby (Victor Moore) with news that will shake up his life.

Jane Wyman plays the part of Polly Haines, a comely model who lives in the Cleopatra. I'll admit that I have underestimated Ms. Wyman in the past, but this film has reminded me that she has talent and attractiveness. Polly is a somewhat simple part to portray, but Ms. Wyman elicits all of its facets with apparent ease.

Broderick Crawford does what he does so well: playing a pugnacious, ranting bully. He is meant to be part of the comedic relief, but his portrayal is not light-hearted enough, and better suited to a film like "Born Yesterday", which has serious issues to peddle.

Niven is the soul of light-hearted comedy, and he easily occupies the film's focal point.

I love it when snobbish Phillips (Niven) suddenly surveys the lovely Polly (Wyman) as she stands across from him in bare-legged short-shorts. Up to now the concert pianist has enclosed himself in a haughty world of the upper-class, too elevated to bother with either concerns of the flesh or those of everyday commoners. But now, oh my gosh, is that the sudden knock-knock of fleshy hormones on his closed door. Happily for me, his aren't the only male hormones the movie's activating.

Catch how snobbish Phillips is when he wants to evict the poor tenants from his newly acquired fancy hotel. Seems they don't measure up to his elite standards. But what does he care that neither kids nor adults have a place to go. Thus, enlarging his withered sense of humanity becomes a key plot thread amid a rather clogged screenplay. And guess who helps him.

Anyhow, the flick's much better at romance than comedy, the latter being clumsily overdone at best, Crawford shouting up an annoying storm, for one. Nonetheless, it's a good thing ace performers Wyman and Niven are on hand to salvage things, especially Wyman just coming off her Oscar winning deaf-mute in Johnny Belinda (1948). Together, the twosome make the gradual humanizing of the haughty Phillips believable, despite the contrived scheming going on behind their backs. That last part, I think, needed a rewrite.

All in all, it's a 90-minutes mainly for fans, or maybe even non-fans, of the two leads. Too bad Wyman and future President Reagan divorced in '49. She would have made a heckuva First Lady in short-shorts, and I surely would've voted Republican.

Comedy is all about timing, of course, and Delmer Daves, the director has horrible timing and no feel for comedy. Scene after scene falls flat, some of which at least had the potential to be funny. He elicits an embarrassing performance from Broderick Crawford as an ill-tempered tenant who sleeps during the day, and yells at everyone with such murderous violence you fear he's going to go on a killing spree, when it's obviously a subplot that's supposed to be played for yuks. Niven, as the pampered pianist, and Wyman, as a down-to-earth print model, are likable as always (and Wyman displays fantastic legs wearing white shorts in one scene where Niven literally can't take his eyes off her) but they can only do so much with the middling material. Victor Moore supplies the film's only laughs as the curious little man who runs the apartment building, Willoughby.

Very familiar "Local Hero" plot line which I'm usually a sucker for but it requires a filmmaker with a much lighter touch.

In A Kiss In The Dark David Niven is cast as a concert pianist whose business manager Joseph Buloff handles his many diversified investments which among other things a brownstone apartment building called The Cleopatra Arms. Acting as superintendent of the place and also one of the tenants is Victor Moore. When Moore comes calling one day Niven finds out about his ownership and gets to meet some of the many tenants there including perky model Jane Wyman.

It isn't too long before Niven is involved throughly with the lives and fortunes of all the tenants there. Among others are Wyman's boyfriend Wayne Morris and an irascible Broderick Crawford who has a problem getting to sleep.

We're never told what his job is, but Crawford works a graveyard shift job and comes home and wants a little shut eye. The comedy around him centers on his irascibility due to sleep deprivation. I'm not sure how funny that is, I had sympathy for the guy. Nevertheless all the other tenants want him out and Niven finds a way to oblige.

With Victor Herbert's melody weaving in an out of the soundtrack and serving as title and theme for the film, A Kiss In The Dark is a slight but amusing comedy that in the hands of a director better suited for comedy might have worked better. Certainly David Niven has gotten worse material and managed to make it work.

A Kiss In The Dark was the farewell film of Maria Ouspenskaya who plays Niven's original piano teacher. Maria whose career went back to the Russian Art Theater was killed in a house fire the same year A Kiss In The Dark came out.

One hopes that David Niven held on to the Cleopatra Arms. What it would be worth today is incalculable. A lot more than the film.