It's Love I'm After, a review by Antares
It's Love I'm After (1937)
4/5 - This months star of the month on TCM is Leslie Howard, an actor whom I've only seen in a handful of films. I was bored last night and just caught the beginning of this film. I wasn't going to watch it, but somehow it started to draw me in, and am I glad it did. It's a shame that this film is never mentioned when the list of great screwball comedies is being compiled. Howard and Bette Davis have excellent comedic timing, and Olivia De Havilland is perky without being overly saccharine. But the real star of this film is Eric Blore, who steals almost every scene he is in. It's a story about two actors, Basil Underwood & Joyce Arden (Howard & Davis) who are in love, but tend to drive each other crazy. They've been slated for the altar many times, but have always found a reason for putting their nuptials on the back burner. After a performance of
Romeo and Juliet, and an ensuing argument and reconciliation, they decide to marry the next day, which is New Year's Day. But another fly in the ointment appears in the guise of Henry Grant (Patric Knowles), the fiance of a love struck ingenue named Marcia West (De Havilland), who is completely smitten with Underwood. Grant blames Underwood for his troubles with his fiance and is looking for some kind of restitution. Underwood realizes that Grant is the son of a prominent banker who helped him during the stock market crash of 1929, and promises to make everything right with Grant and Miss West. He will portray for Miss West's benefit, the most vicious cad he can conjure up from a lifetime of acting performances, and help send her scurrying back to Grant. He will do this with the help of his devoted valet Digges (Played magnificently by Eric Blore), who together, re-enact scenes and scenarios from various stage plays which seem to fit the mold of the situation at hand.
But things go wrong when he arrives at the West's mansion uninvited and unannounced. The more callous he appears, the more forgiving Miss West is of his boorish behavior, explaining that a man of his talents is beyond reproach, and she falls ever more in love with him. It's at this point when the film really takes off as Digges hatches a plan to get Miss Arden to the mansion to help extricate his master from the hole he's digging for himself. But when she arrives, and catches Underwood swooning over the young girl, she decides to teach him a lesson and helps to keep the two together, knowing that Underwood will quickly tire of the young girl's affections. From here on out, the laughs comes fast and furious, and many times I found myself laughing hysterically at the reactions of both Underwood and Digges to the calamity engulfing them. How this film is not mentioned in the same breath as
Bringing Up Baby,
My Man Godfrey and
His Girl Friday is beyond me. It has everything you could want in a screwball comedy...top notch performances, gut busting laughter and a first rate screenplay. If you can find it, I heartily suggest you seek it out, it's a forgotten gem of the screwball era.
(From Antares' Short Summations on July 11th, 2012)
Users: 0
May 15, 2024, 10:22:26 PM
