Movie Review Double-Feature: Mr. Smith Goes to Washington/The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer

Jimmy Stewart and Carey Grant make for a great double feature, I can tell you that.

"The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer," 1947, stars Carey Grant with Myrna Loy as his eventual romantic opposite, Shirley Temple as a 17-year-old, and some other people. Mostly it's Carey Grant we care about.

It's horribly unfeminist, this movie -- let's get that out on the table right off. (It would be anti-feminist if it had come after or during the feminist movement.) As with "Song of the South," the prevailing theory of the movie, and the basis for the reasonableness of the romantic connection between "Dickie" (Richard Nugent, Carey Grant's character) and Judge Margaret Turner (OMG, A WOMAN JUDGE -- the movie startles itself, here), is that what women really need is a man around the house.

Uncle Max, the court psychiatrist and uncle to Margaret and Susan (Shirley Temple), sets up the need for Margaret to marry from his first scene. In an appalling breach of all ethical considerations, he also discusses Margaret's "Oedipus complex" with Richard Nugent when Nugent is sitting in a jail cell awaiting trial for punching an assistant D.A. (It's a long story.)

Max, in the end, becomes the "Deus ex Max-china" that manipulates Margaret and Richard into getting together.

But before that, there's greatness.

For one, there's the scene in which younger-Turner-sister Susan corners Richard after he gives a lecture at her high school. She claims to be the editor of the school paper and gets him alone in a room before he can escape. She insists that he tell her everything about his life; he insists that it's been a dull one. She presses. Realizing he won't get anywhere if he doesn't give her the sort of story she wants, he says "alright then, I'll tell you."

You can see the transition plainly on Carey Grant's face -- the amused bemusement, the decision to make up a story to suit Susan -- and it's laugh-out-loudable. It's also so clear he's making stuff up that it tells us a lot about Susan: how immature she is, and how infatuated with Nugent.

Like all old-tyme comedies, this one relies heavily on contrivances to be funny; since they are funny, I mainly forgave them for being so contrived.

And they allow for lines from Myrna Loy, who gets most of the best dialogue -- like "I'm sorry. I've never been subjected to so much charm before."

The best line of the movie is delivered by Loy as Judge Margaret Turner, at a date-gone-awry at which every side character has arrived: As she stands up to go, distraught, she shouts with equal, desperate emphasis on all parts of the line, "Shut up! And thank you for a lovely evening!"

Like most comedies relying on contrivance, the failure of "The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer" is how contrived its ending is -- but hey. If we can forgive Shakespeare (and some of us can't) for the end of "As You Like It" (or any of his comedies), we can forgive Sidney Sheldon for the end of this one.

Note: Bizarrely, the IMDB.com page for this movie suggests that if you liked it, you might also like "American Beauty." Uh, right, IMDB. Thaaaaanks.

Spurred on by the success of "The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer," that Cary Grant/Shirley Temple vehicle (depending, you know, on who you like), and inspired by my own upcoming jaunt to D.C., I decided it was finally time to see "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington," that Jimmy Stewart/Frank Capra vehicle. On the list of classics every American is supposed to see before she dies, "Mr. Smith" hasn't had much of a chance with me -- I saw "Gone With the Wind" in college, and was dis-impressed enough to stop watching the Great Classics.

One cliche after another, with these movies, I thought. (Citizen Kane being an always-notable exception: See it.)

But in addition to having had recent success with old-tyme Carey Grant, I'd also seen (most of) "You Can't Take It With You," another Jimmy Stewart-Frank Capra movie. It was quirky and worthwhile, and I had hope that "Mr. Smith" would fall more into this category than the good but treacle-filled "It's a Wonderful Life."

It did.

But it also fell into the category of "HOORAY FOR AMERICA!!" which aren't typically movies I list in my top hundred. (With the possible exception of "Independence Day," because who doesn't love Will Smith saving the world??)

Still, "Mr. [Jefferson] Smith" surprised me. Of course, I'd heard about the filibuster scene, but I didn't know particulars. I won't tell them here, just in case you haven't seen it and want to, but I was impressed with how relatively normal these things were.

What most impressed me among the surprises was how small and understandable Mr. Smith's ambitions were: All he wanted was a boy's camp.

Of course, the camp was a metaphor for the ideals of American life, etc. And it seems to me that it was the small-time focus that allowed for some of the statements that amounted to a practical communism. Mr. Smith waxed eloquent on the idea of boys of "all nationalities" and economic backgrounds coming together in the wilderness of his (unidentified) state.

Much of the rest of my impressed-ness is reserved for how scary parts of the movie are. When a whole state -- even a fictitious, midwestern state seventy years ago -- can be trampled on by a political machine, especially when that machine controls the press, that's scary. And maybe a little too close to home.

The violence against the Boy Rangers defending Mr. Smith (by spreading newsletters that tell the truth) escalates admirably, so that each new level of hushing-up done by the Taylor political machine is startling and ultimately sickening. It gave me chills.

I liked the end, too, though it wasn't until that point that I understood why certain things had happened earlier in the storyline than they typically would (the romantic interest subplot, for instance, was clumsily handled and finished off before the final third of the movie or so -- but major points, there, for the girl-friend winning over the terribly attractive incompatible floozy).

While I don't know that I would have taken to Mr. Smith's patriotic prattle in real life, it was a good movie. (And who doesn't love Jimmy Stewart saving the world??)