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The Meet Cute takes place at the Panama Canal as a ship's change in elevation anticipates the tale's fluctuating moods, screwball fizz along with the ache of melodrama. Carole Lombard is the chanteuse turned hairdresser, Fred MacMurray just out of the Army takes her to a local cantina to extol the romantic possibilities of music. "Romance in a trumpet? Eh!" she scoffs, so he grabs a nearby bugle and blows an impromptu declaration of love—she's so transfixed that she barely acknowledges a young Anthony Quinn hitting on her, a melee ensues and she's stranded with the brash musician. At Cecil Cunningham's nightclub they pose as a married couple, their growing affection is threatened by his talent for trouble. (Cunningham, tartly: "He's never had a responsibility in his life!" Lombard, pliantly: "He's got me.") Mitchell Leisen delights in the Christmas décor of a tropical honky-tonk, in the massive polka-dot bow on Dorothy Lamour as she croons "Panamania," in the sudden slapstick of the hypochondriac friend (Charles Butterworth) bringing a cockfight victim back to noisy life with a drop of iodine. Above all, he loves the intimacy between his players, the way Lombard performs "I Hear a Call to Arms" to MacMurray's bluesy licks, an embrace under the spotlight. "Everybody in the tropics drinks champagne," gaiety darkens as the "quick-change artist" gets the New York siren call. (An ecstatic montage takes a kaleidoscopic view of Broadway, a despairing one looks like lost footage from The Lost Weekend.) The privilege of emotion "to the marrow of my bones," the reconciliation of two tremulous soloists is a hopeful duet. Cassavetes (Too Late Blues) takes it from there. With Jean Dixon, Harvey Stephens, Charles Arnt, and Franklin Pangborn. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |