A Kiss in the Dark

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.

A Kiss in the Dark isn't a very nice movie. How can a movie not be nice, you ask? It makes fun of an intellectual because he doesn't know his way around the great outdoors like a boy scout. A character works the graveyard shift and wishes his neighbors to be quiet during the day so he can sleep, and instead of sympathy, the neighbors purposely make as much noise as possible to drive him away. Infidelity is brushed under the rug, and if the main character's lines were said by someone other than David Niven, he'd probably come across as callous.

In the film, David Niven is a world-famous concert pianist, but after twenty-one years of performances, he wants a break. Somehow, he finds out he's accidentally purchased an apartment complex, and the manager, Victor Moore, asks him to help fix the shabby place. The physical structure is in tatters, it's out of money, and the tenants don't get along. But, since David Niven meets Jane Wyman during his first visit, and since he can't stop staring at her lovely legs, he agrees to put his normal life on hold and devote all his time and energy to the apartment's problems.

Jane actually looks pretty cute in this movie, and has much more energy than she usually does. The Niv is always darling, but his talents are wasted in this silly romantic comedy. There are a couple of cute jokes, sprinkled in among the eye-rolling slapstick gags and rather mean-spirited main plot points. Jane baulks that The Niv thinks he's better than everyone else; she says, "He's not the President of the United States!" which, if you remember who she used to be married to, will make you laugh. And, in my favorite part of the movie, David Niven shows her his travel keyboard, saying when he travels without it he doesn't know what to do with himself. Jane looks him up and down, smiles, and tosses the keyboard aside.

All in all, this one's very silly. Jane fans can watch Three Guys Named Mike, Niv fans can watch Happy Go Lovely, and Victor fans can watch Swing Time instead.

David Niven, a concert pianist, has just acquired a new property, that of a hotel building called Cleopatra Arms. I forget the details of how or why, but the place turns out to be anything but normal. He goes to see the place, after getting a visit from the hotel manager Victor Moore about getting repairs fixed for the building inspector. David winds up inspecting Jane Wyman, a tenant in her short shorts, and they instantly hit it off, despite the fact she already has a boyfriend, played by Wayne Morris. Broderick Crawford is a tenant who works by night, so he must sleep by day, and is very obnoxious about everyone making too much noise. There is a very funny bit about David practicing his piano playing next door to Crawford's room in an attempt to get the brute to move. In fact, I enjoyed the whole film, as it was very lighthearted and fun, with David being put in the position of Boy Scout leader, when he takes a group of boys on a hike and David, of course, knows nothing about such outdoor techniques of building a lean-to shelter. A sweet and satisfying little winner this is with Jane and David and a kiss in the dark....

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.

David Niven is an isolated concert pianist who is swept into the lives of apartment house residents in "A Kiss in the Dark," also starring Jane Wyman. Niven is excellent as a man who knows no other world than that of the concert stage and the practice room, and his handlers like it that way. When an apartment manager visits him, Niven learns that one of his investments is The Cleopatra Apartments. One look at Jane Wyman in her shorts and Niven decides not to be an absentee landlord.

This is a very entertaining comedy, and I agree with previous posters that there are laugh out loud scenes. Some of the comedy is provided by, of all people, Broderick Crawford as a subletter who works at night and sleeps -- or tries to -- all day. It's a different role for Crawford, and he does it very well.

Wyman is very pretty and vivacious as an apartment dweller who falls for Niven, and the two have wonderful chemistry. Handsome Wayne Morris is her insurance salesman boyfriend. This isn't the most fabulous film you'll ever see, but it's a fun one.