Saturday, August 19, 2006
TENSION
Today's NYTimes Best 1176 Film was
When I was a kid, well, still today, I thought Charles Coburn was a great comic actor.
He shines here playing cupid in a mid WWII romantic comedy with Joel McCrae and Jean Arthur. The three are 'room-mates'. You had to be there.
It is a WWII based plot, so you have to get with the times to understand the humor and the sexual tension.
I suspect it would work even if you weren't there, but not as cleanly.
The times were high speed war effort. The sexual tension in many of these romantic comedies were around whether to do it before you were married or not.
In this one, there is clearly not even a thought of undocumented sex.
A lot of the comic repercussions depend on this.
You won't see a remake. Current audiences would find it naive and puritanical.
Nevertheless, in the 'getting to know you' half of the film, McCrae and Arthur make an art of foreplay with their clothes on. It is way sexy. Hot.
He, especially, is all hands all the time and just so, so cool about it; a digital ballet.
The direction by George Stevens, at times, just borders on the slapstick but that is fine too.
And Coburn is at the center of it all; turning the dials and ringing the bells. He is the man behind the curtain making sure that the lovebirds fly away together.
It is a solid 4 out of Netflix5 if you get the setting; maybe a 3 if you don't or don't want to.
Joel McCrae had two careers. The first was as a lanky, slightly awkward (in a sexy way) leading man in romantic comedies. The second, and longer, career was in westerns.
He beefed up a bit in later life but never lost the sparkle of his leading man days. It was an attractive and unique combination that made the oater of the month or year very special when you saw it.
He has 92 credits at IMDb and earned every one of them as far as I can tell.
Today, I couldn't even Google a photo of him off a DVD or VHS cover. He has no bio on Wikipedia. But I remember Joel.
