Lazo sagrado

Lombard was tired of doing screwball comedies, and still had her eye on the Selznick ultimate prize, Scarlett O'Hara - but she had to prove she could handle dramatic parts, to herself and to the public. This film is low-key, charming in its own way, but rather schizophrenic in plot. James Stewart is a convincingly earnest young husband and fledgling attorney who meets and marries the Lombard character in a whirlwind romance, before the couple comes crashing back to earth with a loud thud. Baby soon makes three, and Mother-in-Law makes an uncomfortable four -- in a tiny apartment, with an even tinier household budget.

The plot peculiarities begin on a New Year's Eve -- although in the midst of a huge party, Jane and Johnny don't feel much like celebrating. They argue all the time, and can't really remember what they loved about each other to begin with. Then their baby gets desperately ill, and the plot appears to belong in a different movie. After some pretty dramatic twists, the movie returns to its original focus and becomes relatively normal again.

All in all, a fairly entertaining domestic soaper, until the Plot Twist from Mars rears its alien head. You'll be making faces at the screen, saying to yourself, "Hunhhhh?????"

Made for Each Other (1939)

"Last year there were half a million divorces in this country. Congratulations."

And that is the beginning of a sometimes-screwball comedy that turns very serious by the end, with James Stewart leading the charge. It could be screwier, and Jimmy Stewart is more lovable than hilarious, so the humor revolves around him as the foil. Carole Lombard, his partner in crime, can be more zany, for sure, but even there, she is more restrained than other films (like "Twentieth Century"). It's the situation, and the rest of the cast, who make this funny...and eventually tragic.

How exactly it drags at times is hard to say. Oddly, even Stewart is a little off base, exaggerating too much. The plot, overall, lacks drive. You might think this doesn't matter in a silly comedy, but it does very much. In fact, because this comedy is laced with a fair amount of normal drama, it needs a basic conflict that dramas need. There are some terrific scenes--the New Year's moment is really moving, and the scenes after that--and these are the reason to watch.

On some level, this is a type of drama/comedy that is aimed at new parents, or newlyweds. The couple's focus on the baby reminded me of "Christmas in Connecticut," and "Penny Serenade." I wish it just worked better, but too often it bumbles along, one little moment after another, the result of imperfect direction (John Cromwell) and a weak script. So it does the best it can, and the last half hour is its best, with high drama kicking in. This is a David O. Selznick production in the same year as his slightly more famous movie, "Gone with the Wind."

This is really three stories in one about the same couple - and none of them would be really worth seeing if not enacted by Stewart and Lombard.

The first part is by far the best. It is a light-hearted comedy, in the screwball style, about a generally not self-assured young lawyer who for once has taken an impulsive decision, marrying a girl on a chance meeting as a result of love at first sight, putting himself at odds with the two persons he is in awe of and mostly dominated by - his deaf Scrooge of a boss, and his possessive mother. This is quite funny, especially the scene of breaking the news to the mother/mother-in-law.

Then things become fairly humdrum and boring with the second part. The lawyer does not get the promotion he deserved and expected, the young couple has a baby, and they start facing money problems. Baby scenes are a string of moderately amusing cliches, which are absolutely useless to the story. Money problems are trivial, and it takes James Stewart awkwardness to provide some fun when he tries to get a raise from his literally but potentially intentionally deaf boss - Charles Coburn not in one of his most memorable compositions. All of this part of the film spills the beans about what its problem really is - basically it has very little to tell, therefore it fills the void with everything which passes at hand.

And everything in the third part becomes an old plot trick of screenwriters with a shortage of inspiration - a severe, potentially fatal illness of one of the characters, in that case the baby in order to create drama where really there should have been none. Brutally the film turns to crude melodrama and the artificial suspense, extensively dilated, of a serum to be brought by an heroic pilot. Well, well - not telling whether the baby is saved, the film is most certainly not.

Carole Lombard and James Stewart are the only good reason, if any, to watch this mishmash. Stewart is mostly his usual funny and touching self, playing a well-meaning but not always well-inspired character who tries, through necessity, to become the hard-edged breadwinner whom he is not naturally. Lombard's role on the contrary evolves farther and farther away from her usual parts while the film shifts from one storyline to the other. Fresh-faced and fresh-tongued as the bride from nowhere, she adjusts less well, like her character, to the boring life of a housewife with domestic problems - hard to blame her not to put her heart fully in it when viewers are quite bored themselves. Then and finally, melodrama - not an usual or natural genre for her, but she more than deftly adjusts. Moreover, some shots of her face in grief and anxiety, unusually strained but as beautiful as always if not more, "Garbo shots", deepen our regrets of her tragically shortened life and career. Sooner or later it would probably have been discovered that beyond her innate talent for comedy, she could play with equal ease and natural much more dramatic roles. Alas, occasions including this botched one have been very limited.

Jimmy Stewart and Carole Lombard make an incredibly appealing couple, one whose everyday middle-class joys and sorrows you like sharing. That's all there is to the movie, pretty much, Jimmy and Carole get married, have a baby, deal with in-laws, money troubles, changes in their relationship, all the things everyone does. It's the opposite of an Action Flick, here domestic sorrows like pay cuts and not having a baby sitter on New Year's Eve are treated as seriously as real people treat them, and the movie is well made enough that you care. Who couldn't care about such nice, funny, sensitive people? For much of its length, it's a better "Penny Serenade".

The place where it falls apart is the ending, which is a ludicrously inappropriate melodrama about flying medicine in from thousands of miles away in a storm, it just doesn't belong in the same movie. But, I like the story behind it: Like a character in the movie, producer David Selznick's brother Myron (a power agent) was taken seriously ill, and was basically given up for dead. A doctor said that the only thing that could save him was a rare/experimental drug that wasn't available in LA, it had to be flown in from the east coast in terrible weather. The Selznick family sweated for hours, trying to keep in touch with a heroic pilot who was risking his life to save a stranger. When the pilot landed safely and Myron was saved, David Selznick the workaholic producer said "This it too good to waste on Myron. Let's put it in a picture!" I just wish he'd waited for a better place to use it.

James Stewart and Carole Lombard meet and marry on impulse while Stewart is in Boston on a case.

When they get back to New York the two of them go through a lot of the trials that newlyweds do, a seemingly unfeeling and uncomprehending boss, a bitter mother-in-law for Lombard, a new baby and then a sick toddler. I guess the fact that they get through it all is proof that they were indeed Made for Each Other.

Other reviewers have noted some similarities between It's A Wonderful Life and Penny Serenade. They are certainly there. What's not there is the screwball comedy that we remember Carole Lombard for. No laughs in this one, she plays this quite seriously and shows her versatility.

Stewart however is pure Stewart. It's as if Jefferson Smith had gone to law school instead of becoming a Boy Ranger. He's so idealistic and full of hope as he starts married life with Lombard. As he appeals to Charles Coburn for financial help to save his kid, the whole audience in the theaters must have felt along with him.

The two have some problems keeping household staff and when they find one they really like, their budget crunch forces them to let Louise Beavers go. Though it sure has some racial clichés in it, my favorite moment comes from Louise Beavers in that scene with Carole Lombard as Lombard tells her they will have to discharge her. Beavers is a woman with real heart and soul and her words of comfort to Lombard never fail to move me.

For fans of melodramatic soap opera and the two stars. Some may find Made for Each Other too saccharine, but I like it.