Spotlight

Spotlight Date: 19-October-08
Spoiler Rating: Medium

The More the Merrier (1943)

You have to envy Jean Arthur's luck. In Talk of the Town (1942) she welcomes boarder Ronald Coleman to her summer house and ends up harboring Cary Grant's wrongly convicted criminal as well. In The More the Merrier (1943) she advertises for a roommate and ends up with the matchmaker/hunk combination of Charles Coburn and Joel McCrea. In both cases she enjoys an exhilarating boost of masculine camaraderie suffused with romance and enlightenment. Sure, she endures some discomfort and heartsickness, but it looks like a lot of fun.

Arthur perfectly plays the kind of woman who can mix with men as more than a pretty face. George Stevens' The More the Merrier flaunts her traditional feminine allure but does not dull the pluck underneath, the anti-glamorous, don't-put-me-on-a-pedestal personality which allows her to hold her own. Here the pluck is a bit of a liability for her character. When Coburn's aged businessman insinuates himself into her D.C. apartment during a wartime housing shortage, he finds a woman whose determination to live sensibly entails a sorry lack of passion. She has long been engaged to an ambitious climber about whom the nicest thing she can say is that he makes a lot of money, and she manages her day like a headmistress. Coburn sees immediately what she needs and invites McCrea to share his room because he looks like a handsome, red-blooded, upright guy. Which of course he is, although he comes on gruffly because he also lacks passion. The accommodation of one newcomer, then another into the apartment involves slapstick comings and goings from which Three's Company undoubtedly took its cue. In one clever moment Arthur and McCrea shimmy to a rhumba with a wall between them, sure proof that each has hidden emotions that the other might bring out.

The comic atmosphere yields jerkily to the romantic one, and the second half of the movie has its highs and lows. One high is an expertly choreographed scene in which McCrea walks Arthur home and makes love to her in a way that is both intense and languid, suggesting a kind of enchantment. (D'oh! He can't say good-bye on the doorstep!) One low is Coburn's transition from a kindly and eccentric fairy godfather to an omnipotent and conniving one; I would have enjoyed learning something about him that gave personal meaning to his actions. This is especially true since the movie's motto is his own: when living life, one should plow full speed ahead.

Copyright © 2008 The Jujube (M. I. Kim). All rights reserved.