Lili Damita

But ohhhh! that Mitzi!

A delightful comedy of manners from Ernst Lubitsch (with some assistance from George Cukor), rivaling Love Me Tonight as the best musical comedy and Trouble in Paradise as Lubitsch’s supreme achievement of that year. While most critics agree that it just misses reaching either one of those heights, it’s still one of the supreme treats of the Pre-Code era, best enjoyed a little over an hour before midnight together with (as per Leslie Halliwell’s suggestion) some Whitstable natives, salmon, trout and strawberries Romanoff, and an ice-cold bottle of either Moët et Chandon or Château d’Yquem on the side. And if you choose both of them…that’s what I do, too.Read More »

An affair is about to be consummated in a planned trip to Venice, but complications ensue when the woman’s husband returns unexpectedly from the Olympics. Cary Grant is the javelin-wielding Olympian in his first feature film. For probably the last time he gets fifth billing behind, among others, a sparkling Thelma Todd and Charlie Ruggles.

Very pre-code in its sensibility, with clear references to Lubitsch.Read More »

IMDB User Reviews
20 April 2004 | by bullybyte (United Kingdom)

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

SPOILERS!! The film starts with a woman on the run from her millionaire husband giving birth to a daughter in the home of a washerwoman. The woman dies in childbirth, but the baby survives. The washerwoman leaves the baby in a horsedrawn Parisian taxicab (No. 13). The paperwork of the birth is lost in a huge tome. Sixteen years pass. The tome is bought by a poor student. One day his bookshelf collapses, and the tome opens at the page where the paperwork has been hidden. The student realises that the paperwork relates to a millionaire who has spent the last sixteen years looking for his pregnant wife.Read More »