Friday 15 December 2017

I Love You Again (1940 W.S.Van Dyke)

It struck me that Woody 'One Shot' comes over like Woody Allen - because he's keen to save time, he allows long takes and moves the camera to accommodate the actors - sound familiar?

All these old movies seem to be based on something else, a book or play, and are rarely original. This one is from a novel by the unlikely sounding Octavus Roy Cohen (1937) adapted by Leon Gordon and Maurine Dallas Watkins and screenwritten by Charles Lederer  (Comrade X, His Girl Friday, I Was a Male War Bride, Monkey Business), George Oppenheimer and Harry Kurnitz (Witness for the Prosecution).

William Powell recovers from a nine year bout of amnesia and finds he's respectable and married, though wife Myrna Loy is seeking divorce; Frank McHugh is in on it. Uncredited in cast is Charles Halton (To Be Or Not To Be, Foreign Correspondent, The Thin Man Goes Home, Stranger on the Third Floor). Music by Franz Waxman, photographed by Oliver T. Marsh.

Powell looks even more ridiculous than in last night's film dressed as scout master (a comic highlight) or breaking in to his own pot factory.



"You certainly can kick that amnesia around."

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