Tuesday, June 23, 2009
CROSS DRESSING
Today's NYTimes Best 1176 Film was Billy Wilder's first American comedy
The Major and the Minor (1942)
with Ginger Rogers and Ray Milland.
This preposterous situation comedy wherein Rogers dresses as a 12 year old girl and gets away with it, more or less, somehow becomes totally probable when you see the film.
It is amazing that we are drawn into the scheme of things. A lot of this has to do with Roger's skill. She is a powerhouse and carries every scene. She is in all of them!
The movie is very funny and has a platoon of familiar character actors to make it work like a machine. The Wilder touch is evident here at the beginning of his work in this country. He sure captures the American spirit in a funny way. Outsiders see things differently.
One side benefit here is that the humorist Robert Benchley appears as a dirty old man. I loved Benchley as a kid. I read all this stuff and even used a monologue of his for a high school competition in "radio speech".
I wouldn't mind seeing it again but I wouldn't go out of my way. I think it would be thin stuff the second time through.
I will give it a 3 out of Netflix5.
Labels: best films
