Director: George Cukor
Year Released: 1950
Rating: 2.0
It starts off cute enough, with Broderick Crawford and Judy Holliday playing immoral capitalist/mobster and moll, respectively, and the dialogue crackles like in Hawks' pictures. But when the real "plot" kicks in, with Crawford doing something intelligible and hiring brainy (notice the spectacles) William Holden (who's also a famous newspaper columnist) to teach ditzy Holliday about literature, history and the arts. If you haven't figured out at this point that Holliday is going to fall in love with Holden and run away from aggressive, obnoxious Crawford (who orders people around and screams his lines), you're eligible to start your own movie studio. But the film also transforms at this point from a light comedy to social commentary, with Holden declaring immense pride in the honesty and integrity of America, and how it was started by many wise, visionary men, and how those morals and ethics carry over to the present day. All these platitudes are used to "show" us how "rotten" Crawford's character is, but not to worry: our proud country and free press will put people like him back in place. When Cukor has Holden reading Thomas Jefferson, it goes overboard with its own preachy patriotism.
