名匠エルンスト・ルビッチによる、ハリウッド黄金期のチャーミングなロマンティック・コメディ。閻魔大王の前で「女を泣かせてばかりだった」と告白した老紳士の、70年余りの女性遍歴が回想とともに展開される。
AIが作品の魅力を深く読み解いています
監督: Ernst Lubitsch
脚本: Samson Raphaelson / Leslie Bush-Fekete
音楽: Alfred Newman / Cyril J. Mockridge
制作: Ernst Lubitsch
撮影監督: Edward Cronjager
制作会社: 20th Century Fox
I kept seeing Clifton Webb in the role of "Henry Van Cleve" here, but Don Ameche manages it well enough as he arrives in the waiting room "downstairs" for an interview with Laird Cregar. He thinks he has lived his successful life in such a fashion as to merit refusal up where Mozart and Beethoven still play, but his interviewer decides to let him tell his own story and that's where we come in. "Henry" comes from a wealthy New York family where he is expected to conform to society rules by his father "Randolph" (Louis Calhern) and mother "Bertha" (Spring Byington). Well suffice to say he doesn't ever really want to play that game, but nobody quite expects him to pinch his cousin's bride-to-be "Martha" (Gene Tierney) just as they get engaged. What now ensues sees the couple's trials and tribulations as they bring up their own son "Jack" with the assistance of their grandpa "Hugo" (Charles Coburn) before sadness tinges his life. At the start we all make assumptions about "Henry", but gradually we realise that he's actually quite a decent cove whose instinctive behaviour is refreshing amongst the formality and pseudo-snobbishness of a society that's long since forgotten it's own shoot from the hip roots. Coburn is on good form, Eugene Palette - and his instantly recognisable tones - turns in a few fun cameos as her father and though maybe a bit long, it tells us a story of true love in a gently amiable, quite personable fashion that allows the chemistry between Ameche and Tierney to gently simmer.
