Lune de miel mouvementée

**SPOILERS** Combination 1930's screwball comedy and WWII Hollywood propaganda movie that has the Nazi's looking so ridicules even when their taking over all of Western Europe that you don't know if you should either laugh or cry as your watching it. Brooklyn showgirl and gold-digger Katie O'Hara, Ginger Rogers, has traveled to Vienna Austria to strike it big by lassoing in a rich Austrian baron. Katie hit's the bullseye with chubby but rich and well bred Baron Von Luber, Walter Slezak.

While Katie is planning to get married to the Baron American reporter Pat O'Toole, Cary Grant,is trying to get the big story, Brooklyn girl marries rich European Aristocrat, impersonates Katies tailor only to have the real one show up, after Pat took Katie's measurements, thus making a quick withdrawal from Katie's bedroom. It's at that moment that the Nazi's enter Vienna incorporating Austria into the German Reich.

Pat smitten by Katie and ignoring her soon to be husband starts to follow her and the Baron to Prague Czechoslovakia. Just then just like in Vienna the Nazi's suddenly march into town with their Fuhrer Adolph Hitler leading the parade. We see the big man himself, Adolph Hitler, all five foot eight inches of him in newsreels and being played actor Carl Ekberg throughout the film.

It's not until the Baron travels together with Katie and Pat tagging along to Warsaw Poland that we get an inkling of just what he's all about. It turns out that the Baron is the advance man for Hitler's vaunted Whermacht and Luftwaffe. In that he softens up every country that he stays in making them easy for the German Military to invade and take over. In Poland just before the German invasion the Baron sells the Polish military commander General Boneiski, Albert Bassermann, a load of new and state of the art automatic weapons only to later find out that they don't work. Making it a piece of cake for the Whermacht to overrun the Poles and capture Warsaw.

It's during the bombardment of Warsaw that both Pat and Katie come up with the idea of having her declared a fatality of war which in return has her marriage to the Baron no longer valid. This, lucky guy, has handsome and debonair Pat O'Toole, well really Cary Grant, get a crack at Katie as her new and fellow American husband.

The film starts to get serious when after both Pat and Katie run into the Baron in Paris France, another country that the Baron helped his Fuhrer Hitler to take over, this after spending some time in a German concentration camp on the suspicion of them both being Jewish. Katie switched her US passport with her Jewish maid so she and her two young children can get out of Nazi occupied Europe.

Pat cooks up a scheme to get a job as a broadcaster for the German propaganda ministry, this is in 1940 before the US was at war with Nazi Germany, to give him and Katie, whom the Baron had since lost interest in,time to get new passports and get the first boat out of Nazi occupied France and back to the USA. Pat now really getting under the Baron's skin in his first and only broadcast to America.Pat's on the air hysterics almost has the over-sized and arrogant jerk shot and killed by the Gestapo by him announcing that the loyal and obedient Baron is planning to overthrow the Fuhrer, Hitler, himself and take over the government! All in jest of course. The real kicker in Pat's hilarious broadcast is revealing, again all in jest of course, that the pure blooded Aryan Baron Von Luber is actually married to a Brooklyn Jewish woman! The identity that Katie has on her passport that she switched with her Jewish maid. That had the big and sputtering Nazi buffoon almost burst one of his pure blooded Aryan blood vessels!

The Baron now back in the good graces of the Fuhrer, whom he was accused by Pat of trying to do in, is given a chance to redeem himself by traveling on an ocean-liner to America and do his thing undermined the country and set up the land of the free and home of the brave for the next Nazi conquest. It's then when he runs into his ex-wife,the Fuhrer had annulled his marriage, Katie on deck and the rest of the movie, as well as the Baron himself, is soon to become history.

You don't know how to take this movie since it's about a very serious subject, WW II, but at the same time it doesn't seem to take itself seriously at all. It's as if the film is a precursor to movies and TV shows of post-World War Two goofy and bumbling Nazi's like in the movie "The Producers" and the 1960's TV comedy "Hogan's Heroes".

When Leo McCarey made this film, America was only a number of months into WWII. The events leading up to the start of the war (at least in Europe) were known to some, with most of America still getting their news from the newsreels at the theater or radio. This film is a great way for people to learn about how the opening of WWII began, especially now where some schools are limited in their ability to cover the events. Two "average Americans" moving about Europe, sometimes steps ahead (or behind as in the Polish through Low Countries scenes) of the events which changed Europe. The time in the Polish Ghetto, as well as in Paris, allow for the audience to get to know the characters, without having to gather the facts as the story goes along. Just as National Treasure teaches about American History while entertaining, this movie belongs in the same group, as it tells a "You Are There" version of 1939-40 European History.

Comedy? I don't think so. Even Grant's charms can't save this one. A comedy set in Europe during WWII isn't impossible (see To Be Or Not To Be, also from 1942). But this one includes scenes with Hitler, and jokes about Nazis, not very funny I may add. The story is too ludicrous, the so-called jokes terrible. Whoever liked the movie should check is head. The ending is SO-Stupid! And what honeymoon? Forget it. Even worse than Penny Serenade. Beware. Read a book, eat, do something, anything else.

Although there is a silly side to this movie, I really don't think that its only value is as a curiosity. In reality, it was a singular vehicle for Ginger Rogers to flex her acting muscles, instead of merely being a sidekick in a dance routine. She is something to behold in this movie. And, I maintain that if you are a Cary Grant fan, it's nothing to sit through this slightly confectionery film. It is practically astonishing that the Jewish issue was addressed in a movie made in 1942. Finally, it's worth pointing out that any average film from this period is Shakespearean compared to the dreck on offer most of the time these days.

American burlesque dancer Ginger Rogers jumps at the opportunity to marry a wealthy Austrian baron (Walter Slezak). Little does she know her new husband is a Nazi. Enter radio news correspondent Cary Grant, who falls for Ginger while trying to do a story on her husband. He follows the pair all over Europe. When she's forced to face just who her husband is and what is really going on in the world, Ginger decides to flee with Cary.

A wartime romantic comedy directed by Leo McCarey with two of my favorite stars, Cary Grant and Ginger Rogers. Sounds amazing. Unfortunately it isn't without flaws. But first, some of the good. Cary is charming as ever and has great chemistry with Ginger. Love the measuring scene. For her part, she's pretty and fun. I'm not sure why she was using that terrible accent early on. Her husband knew she was an American so I don't understand who she was supposed to be fooling. I guess she was supposed to be putting on airs, like some kind of society lady or something. It's pretty weird and never addressed. Walter Slezak makes for a fine villain, as he usually did. Albert Bassermann is great in a brief role.

The scenes with Cary and Ginger are what works most in the film, particularly in the first hour. On the downside, when the film awkwardly switches to drama it undoes whatever momentum it has built up. I'm not offended, like other reviewers are, over the use of Nazis and anti-Semitism in a (mostly) light comedy. It was all within context and treated appropriately. However, I do think the movie becomes less interesting and certainly less fun in the second hour as it becomes darker. The fact that it goes on so long is what does it the most harm, though. As it is, it's a flawed film but still worth a peek for fans of Grant and Rogers.