With its confusing, un-related "screwball" title, I found myself surprised to be actually watching a major Golden Age Hollywood feature made by an A-list director Leo McCarey and starring two top stars in Cary Grant and Ginger Rogers which was so critical, so early, of Hitler's regime. America, after all, hadn't long entered the war but I straightaway have to commend the movie in particular for highlighting the treatment of Jews, but also for showing their cold-blooded killing of suspected spies and their reliance on twisted propaganda to further their megalomaniacal plans.
That said, the film does try to mix in comedy elements too, but for me, I think it would have worked far better as a straight drama as the humour is too clunky and unfunny to work. The romance angle between Grant and Rogers I can just about accept, but for example the early scene where Cary measures Ginger up for some clothes or a later one when Ginger impersonates her maid to escape from two dopey German guards or an even later one when he interrupts a ship's captain in a bridge game all just curl the toes rather than the edges of one's mouth.
I also didn't detect any great connection between the two leads and there are times when you can almost see them go into auto-pilot to get each other through certain scenes. Walter Slezak, in his first Hollywood movie, however, convinced for the most part as the duplicitous senior German, causing havoc wherever he goes.
I did like some things about the film, like Rogers' character's sympathetic self-sacrifice to enable her maid and her two young children to get out of the country and the calling out of the Norwegian traitor Quisling in a piece of dialogue, but on the whole I felt this was a well-intentioned, if ultimately awkward mix of humour, romance and drama.
That said, the film does try to mix in comedy elements too, but for me, I think it would have worked far better as a straight drama as the humour is too clunky and unfunny to work. The romance angle between Grant and Rogers I can just about accept, but for example the early scene where Cary measures Ginger up for some clothes or a later one when Ginger impersonates her maid to escape from two dopey German guards or an even later one when he interrupts a ship's captain in a bridge game all just curl the toes rather than the edges of one's mouth.
I also didn't detect any great connection between the two leads and there are times when you can almost see them go into auto-pilot to get each other through certain scenes. Walter Slezak, in his first Hollywood movie, however, convinced for the most part as the duplicitous senior German, causing havoc wherever he goes.
I did like some things about the film, like Rogers' character's sympathetic self-sacrifice to enable her maid and her two young children to get out of the country and the calling out of the Norwegian traitor Quisling in a piece of dialogue, but on the whole I felt this was a well-intentioned, if ultimately awkward mix of humour, romance and drama.