I quietly rung in the New Year, and started my January 1st off with selecting a movie to watch. While you will find a lot of reviews of Film Noir style movies in the future, watching characters back-stab (literally and figuratively) each other just wasn't what I was feeling for the first morning of 2020. I needed something a little more light-hearted to start my day.
Easy Living is a screwball comedy, which is not a genre I tend to watch much of. I guarantee you, you'll never see a review here of a Marx brothers movie. However, there are a few actors and actresses that I love more than I dislike the genre, and Jean Arthur is definitely one of those actresses.
The premise of the movie is that a rich banker (Edward Arnold) throws one of his wife's fur coats of the roof and falls on the head of a woman (Jean Arthur), changing her life forever. The series of events which take Mary Smith from working at a boys magazine to nouveau riche are funny and fast-paced. I can forgive the predictability of the fall-down antics (hence, slapstick comedy) and the lack of communication as Louis of Hotel Louis rents the biggest hotel room to Mary for $7 a week simply because he thinks she is having an affair with "the man we will not mention" (no, heaven forbid we say names and clear up the confusion in 5 minutes) and she can boost his business. My, how times have changed!
But can we talk about this lavish hotel room for a second? Louis navigates Mary through a massive multi-room suite that includes three reception rooms, and a shell shaped bathtub that is taller than any person. Now, I understand that TV and movies have always over glamourized, and created a large-scale fantasy to represent reality (Yes, NBC, I'm talking about the large New York City apartment that young 20-somethings Rachel and Monica lived in; and the perfect 'beach curls' that Detective-turned-Sergeant-turned-Captain Oliva Benson manages every morning). But since in 1937, people only had the movies to fulfill their visual fantasy, I assume that the glamorized version of reality was even more exaggerated. But as an aside, if Myra Loy's and William Powell's apartment in the Thin Man movie series really exists, and really doesn't cost a million dollars, I want it.
While thoroughly enjoying Jean Arthur's sweet, hilarious, and wise-cracking innocent ways, I was surprised by how much I also enjoyed the talent of her co-star, Ray Milland, who plays the rich banker's son. I had previously only seen Milland in one other film - 1944's The Uninvited. While I thoroughly enjoyed the thrill-fest of that movie, it clearly did not allow Milland to show his true comedic talent. It was perhaps, the comedic talent of both stars that allowed the chemistry between them show so brilliantly on the screen - which was also an unexpected surprise for a slapstick comedy. From the moment they met in the cafeteria style restaurant, I was rooting for them. Through each bump, slip, miscommunication, and folly, I loved them both.
The final scenes in the movie in which the banker, played by Edward Arnold, is yelling his head off in his giant office (why do they always have to yell so much in old comedies?) grew a little thin for me, the quick-comedic pace of the movie never disappointed. The writing was smart and the delivery was even better - expect perhaps the part where I think technically Mary committed insider trading, but that's another discussion. The point is, unlike a Film Noir, you know they are going to live happily ever after - no matter what zany path they have to take to get there - and I was okay with that.
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