Yesterday's Cinema Saturday post was about a movie called Mr. & Mrs. Smith, a 2005 action comedy about a couple of spies who are married to each other and tasked with assassinating each other. There were laughs, love, stuff blowed up real good.
Ann (Carole Lombard) and David Smith (Robert Montgomery) are a married couple living in New York City who, though in love, have disagreements that last for days before they reconcile.
One morning, Ann asks David if he would marry her again if he had it to do over. Although he says he is very happy with her now and would not marry anyone else, he says he would not, because it meant the loss of his freedom and independence.
You can see this sort of thing has Ann on edge.
So what happens next does NOT help her mood.
Later that day at David's law office, he gets a visit from Harry Deever an Idaho county official who says that due to a jurisdictional mishap, David and Ann's three-year-old marriage in Idaho was not valid.
Later Deever sees Ann and tells her the same news.
Then David calls Ann to invite her to a romantic dinner at the restaurant they used go to before they were married. David doesn't mention the visit from Deever and neither does Ann. She expects David will want to remarry her that very night.
The romantic dinner is a botch, the restaurant is now a run down hole in the wall with bad food and no ambiance. Returning home, David hasn't mentioned marriage and Ann is running out of patience. She reveals she knows about the marriage license problem and accuses David of not wanting to marry her again.
Before David can offer any kind of defense, Ann kicks him to the curb and insists she will never marry David again.
David's friend and law partner, Jefferson "Jeff" Custer says he will talk to Ann and persuade her to remarry. What a pal!
Except...
Instead Jeff winds up representing Ann as her lawyer.
And then Jeff and Ann start dating.
(Really, this seems to be spinning out of control.)
Ann and Jeff continues to date and eventually decide to take a vacation with Jeff's parents at a Lake Placid ski resort. Meanwhile, it seems David has rented the cabin right next door to theirs.
What a coinkydink!
There are screwball antics, shenanigans and some other 3rd thing as Ann and David tap dance (metaphorically) around each other, arguing and bantering and it's clear to Jeff that David and Ann are made for each other.
In David's cabin, Ann feigns being stuck in her skis and unable to stand up or walk which gives David the opening to give her a big damn kiss and we fade out.
Dear God! What was all that?
To be fair, I may have dozed off for a minute.
Carole Lombard actually directs a scene in this movie, Alfred Hitchcock's cameo that he makes in all his films. At the 45:28 mark, Hitchcock can been seen smoking a cigar and passing Robert Montgomery in from of his apartment building. Lombard delighted the crew with her time behind the camera, especially when she made Hitchcock do several takes of his very simple cameo.
There is some debate over why the master of thrills and suspense agreed to direct a screwball comedy. Hitchcock would later claim it was as a favor for Carole Lombard but otherwise he didn't really want to do it and was not happy with the film. RKO's records so Hitchcock actively pursued this project.
Mr. & Mrs. Smith was one of the earliest films to show a pizzeria. It was also supposed to contain sounds of a toilet flushing but the Hays censorship office put a stop to that and the sound was altered to banging pipes.
(Toilets were a no-no under the Hays code.)
Mr. & Mrs. Smith was the last film released before Lombard's death. To Be or Not to Be (1942) was her final film, released two months after she died in an aircraft crash while on a War Bond tour.
Next week, Carole Lombard returns to Cinema Sunday for a comedic caper involving cons and murder from 1939!
And we have more Brad Pitt in Cinema Saturday.
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