Friday, May 03, 2013

The Old Magoo

Christmas in Connecticut (1945)
directed by Peter Godfrey
rating: 4 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from Netflix

This is one of those terrific movies in which an absurdly complicated setup makes room for dozens of small, wry observations about human nature and common decency. It's also very funny, and not a "Christmas movie" so much as a secular ode to the nice idea that good people believe the people they love deserve every happiness in the world. There's no way out but through with regards to plot, so I'm jumping right in.

Germans torpedo a US warship in the Atlantic. Two men survive, and by day 15 in a raft, one of them can't help but fantasize about food (a steak dinner served on the rubber lifeboat while waiter and sailor try to keep their balance). Cut to the servicemen’s post-rescue convalescence, where they sweet-talk nurses for better rations and read a syndicated column about last night’s feast by "America's Favorite Cook," Elizabeth Lane.

Better rations are one thing, but the dreamed-about porterhouse is something else—nothing less than a marriage proposal will do.

"Just how far do you have to go?"
"How hungry are you?"
"That far? Break a girl's heart that way."
"Her heart or your stomach."

The nurse says yes but can’t let her sailor spend Christmas alone (she has obligations), and she writes the magazine’s editor and asks if he’ll invite Jefferson to Elizabeth Lane’s country house in Connecticut. He will, he does, and invites himself along, too. He gets lonely on holidays in his mansion.

And that’s it. Except that Elizabeth Lane is completely fictional, and Barbara Stanwyck is a city girl who can’t cook and buys fur coats on credit. Her recipes come from an elderly, fatherly Hungarian (S.Z. Sakall) who runs a restaurant where men in love with Babs drink together. The publisher (Sydney Greenstreet!) insists on truth, and will almost certainly fire everyone involved if the conspirators (the writer, the chef, the editor, the suitor) can’t fake it.

I counted six men, at least, happy to give their hearts to our heroine. One is a sap, one a romantic, and as they all converge on a Connecticut farm with a borrowed baby, and the world collapses into gentle chaos, Sydney snacks on cold chicken in the kitchen while Felix mixes Manhattans for himself and a visiting judge. It’s a modern movie: the soldier, an “artist type” when he’s not adrift at sea, teaches Barbara how to bathe a baby. When Felix is flummoxed by the English language, he asks a black waiter for help. I waited for the other shoe to drop—for the bad joke to rear its ugly head—but it never did. The waiter helps him.