Madame poursuit Monsieur

Charming screwball farce played by two of the greatest performers of the 1930s, Miriam Hopkins and Joel Mcrea, with a terrific supporting cast and a director with a fine sense of the absurd.

Hopkins, who suffered no fools and hurt her own career by it, loved working with McCrea and they made a quick series of five films together 1934-1937, all fairly successful at the box office and all great movies well worth viewing, with this one being the last. McCrea was moving into the greatest period of his career, 1937-1946, a time when nearly all his films were big hits. Late in life he credited Ginger Rogers and Barbara Stanwyck as the greatest actresses he worked with in his career, but he also spoke very highly of Hopkins and credited her with helping his career besides being a great screen partner. His wife Frances Dee was very popular with other actresses and the McCrea ranch was the locale for many script readings and scene preps, with Rogers, Stanwyck, Bette Davis and Hepburn being regular visitors.

In this movie, Hopkins is so caught up by the shenanigans in the scene in the tree that she briefly loses her polished acting voice and you can clearly hear her native Savannah, Georgia drawl. And no wonder - it's hilarious!

Not sure why the previous reviewers here didn't like this charming Joel McCrae / Miriam Hopikins comedy. The dialog was tight, witty and clever. I usually don't like slapstick comedies, but the 'slapstick' parts in this were just the right amount to make it work perfectly. Miriam Hopkins was excellent in this - very Carole Lombard-like - with rapid-fire wit, yes, a little over-the-top, but it worked! Joel McCrae was superb and the chemistry between the two really worked. The story may not have been the most original, even for 1937, but it held my attention from start to finish. Very satisfying and highly recommended. Definitely worth seeing, especially if you're fans of either star.

Woman (Miriam Hopkins as Virginia) chases Man (Joel McCrea as Kenneth) for father (Charles Winninger as B.J.). Woman wants to get Man to invest some of deceased mother's money in father's business venture; but, father is notorious for losing money on hair-brained schemes. Little does anyone know, but real evil schemers are posing as Man's best friends in order to steal his fortune...

The production looks engaging, but the story fails to engage. The players don't play drunk well. Notable as Broderick Crawford's first appearance - as gopher "Hunk"; other than running errands, Mr. Crawford gets pinned to the floor by Mr. McCrea.

*** Woman Chases Man (4/28/37) John G. Blystone ~ Miriam Hopkins, Joel McCrea, Charles Winninger, Broderick Crawford

"Woman Chases Man" is a very pleasant little comedy starring Miriam Hopkins and Joel McCrea. It begins when Virginia (Hopkins) approaches B.J. Nolan (Charles Winninger) for a job as an architect. He is VERY impressed with her designs but cannot help her--his son, Kenneth (McCrea) controls the family fortune and won't let him have much at all since he's known for throwing away money. So, Virginia comes up with a screwy idea--that B.J. should hide and they'll pretend that he's in Chicago on some big business deal and she'll entertain Kenneth when he arrives with his friends. However, things don't go well at all at first, as the friends Virginia has hired to pretend to be servants are idiots. Why did she hire them? Because B.J. has squandered the money Kenneth allotted him. It sounds very complicated--but turns out to be a decent little romantic screwball comedy. While I am not a huge fan of Hopkins, in this sort of film she seemed to be in her element. Cute and worth seeing. My only two complaints are small: sometimes the actors talk too fast and I HATE the fainting woman cliché--and this film uses it several times.

I'm not sure why this film doesn't work. It has everything I love about screwball comedies in it, and the wonderful Joel McCrea is gorgeous.

Where does it go wrong? I'm not quite as knocked out by Preston Sturges as the rest of the world because I think he's too prone to pointlessly noisy madcap chase scenes, and more often that not his endings suck a lot, but Preston Sturges' screwballs really work (apart from the chases and the endings) and this film doesn't. The difference, then, must be script. Sturges' scripts are superb, glittering things, that you just want to eat with a spoon, and Woman Chases Man is a fairly charming film with a lifeless script.