Saw The Awful Truth, a 1930s sex comedy. It's about a couple who, plagued with suspicions about each other's fidelity, file for divorce but find that they have so much fun tormenting each other that - well - but that would be telling~! The film is cutesy and goofy, the man played by the ever-silly Cary Grant and the woman played by the humorously suffering Irene Dunne. It's not a bad picture, but very stuffy and overly coy. I also didn't like the viciousness of the protagonists but then I guess that's my age showing or something. I was interested in how seriously Cary Grant is taken. He engages in comic business with the dog and falls over chairs and so on, but his romantic interests are treated with respect as opposed to, say, Harpo Marx's. I don't know how Grant gets away with it, but good on him.
I didn't really like this film very much either. It's funny in an old-fashioned wordy sort of way which is silly and fun but I don't really care about the marriage of these two people who are so cruel to each other. I'm supposed to be enjoying the black-hearted mud slinging but I'm wondering why she should forgive him after humiliating her so badly and vice-versa why he should forgive her for the same. Cary Grant was apparently sure it was going to be flop (I can't blame him) but it was a huge success, comforting people, I suppose, in their own romantic struggles. A cute, fancy little toy film.
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