Mr. & Mrs. Smith (DVD)

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Here's a novelty: the one-and-only outright comedy that Alfred Hitchcock ever made. Oh, he always infused his movies with sly humor, some more than others, and there is always the black comedy "The Trouble With Harry" to consider. But in 1941's "Mr. & Mrs. Smith," Hitchcock dispensed with mystery altogether and went for straightforward screwball comedy; and, we shouldn't be surprised, he was reasonably good at it.

Hitchcock would later admit that he had no idea what he was doing out of his element, that he did the film as a favor to its star, Carole Lombard, and that he just pointed his camera and shot the script as written. But he basically said the same things about "Dial M for Murder" and others of his films, too, so just how much of Hitchcock's self-deprecating explanations we can believe is questionable. What we do know is that the film, which directly followed the thrillers "Rebecca" and "Foreign Correspondent," was not successful at the box office. Apparently, the public was unwilling to buy a purely humorous Hitchcock, and the director was reluctant to try anything quite like it again.

I won't pretend to tell you that "Mr. & Mrs. Smith" is anywhere near as funny as some of the very best screwball comedies of the era--things like "My Man Godfrey," "Bringing Up Baby," "Arsenic and Old Lace," or "His Girl Friday"--but at least it holds its own. Norman Krasna's script is heavy on frothy, lightweight banter but short on actual laughs.

Lombard and Robert Montgomery star as the combative Smiths, a couple who after four years of marriage discover that they're not really married after all. A technicality in their place of marriage invalidates the legality of their wedlock, and they spend the rest of the movie fighting over whether they should get legally hitched all over again.

Montgomery plays David Smith, a prosperous New York City lawyer, who lives with his wife, Ann Krausheimer Smith, in a swank Park Avenue apartment, complete with live-in maid and cook. Like most screwball comedies, this one uses "wealth" and "sophistication" synonymously so expect elegant settings and dapper dress.

David is the kind of guy who's too honest. Before he finds out that he's not actually married, his wife asks him if he would marry her over again if he had the chance, and he foolishly answers "no"; he says he would probably remain single. Not that he doesn't love her, mind you, but he's not sure he was ready for marriage. Anyway, he tells her, the question is only hypothetical. That's what he thinks. When she finds out they're not married, she bars him not only from their bedroom but from their apartment. Meanwhile, Ann starts dating David's law partner, Jeff Custer (Gene Raymond), and David spends the rest of the film trying to win her back.

According to director Peter Bogdanovich in his commentary on the film, the term "screwball comedy" was invented for Ms. Lombard, who was the "queen of screwball comedy." She is quite good, energetic, smart, and high-spirited, and rather makes Montgomery's character look like a dullard by comparison. A dull dullard at that. It was a shame that this would be Lombard's next-to-last picture as she died in an airplane accident the following year.

In any case, the movie is silly and contrived, with a plot that is just able enough to get a few smiles out of the old "battle-of-the-sexes" routine. And a few things work pretty well. Mrs. Smith talks to her husband early on about the need for trust between them while shaving his face and holding a straight razor to his throat. It's the only hint of dark Hitchcock humor in the proceedings. Later, Ann tells David, "I've always had a suspicion about you. So did my mother. Your forehead slants back too much." Then there's a good scene in a shabby Italian restaurant where the food is so bad even the cat won't eat it, and a scene in a night club where David goes on a double date with another woman to make his wife jealous.

Nevertheless, a good screwball isn't worth its salt if it doesn't have a colorful supporting cast, and here, too, "Mr. & Mrs. Smith" is not quite up to par. Jack Carson, a perennial comic relief in movies of the period, isn't given enough to do as a friend David meets at his club. Charles Halton, as a meek and apologetic clerk who has to tell people who were supposedly married in his town that they aren't married after all, fares best; but, again, he has only one good scene. And Esther Dale as Ann's puritanical mother is impressive in a flustered, blustery sort of way. If only they were enough.