Our Wife

New Zealand Listener, Volume 5, Issue 127, 28 November 1941, Page 16

Our Wife

(Columbia)

‘THE suggestion of collective ownership in the title of this film is a trifle misleading. It might more aptly have been called Our Husband since it

is Melvyn Douglas who is shared-more or less--by. Ruth Hussey and Ellen Drew. I would dismiss it as just another of those infernal triangles, slickly presented and smoothly acted-the Hollywood sausage machine working with its usual automatic efficiency-were it not for one twist in the tale which, if not completely new, is at least sufficiently original to give the impression that this sausage is pork. And fresh pork. at that. To continue the metaphor, one might say that the difference isn’t noticeable till »ne has taken a good big bite. For all his eccentric behaviour as a drunkard who jumps off a liner in the Panama Canal to rescue his hat, and is succoured by an elderly professor (Charles Coburn) and his equally learned daughter (Ruth Hussey), Melvyn Douglas is merely that familiar screen figure, the disillusioned husband whose wife hasn’t come up to expectations and who has taken to the bottle and a sea voyage in order to for-

get. And for all her academic degrees, her scientific detachment, and the description of her as "an intellectual zombie whose body is dead and whose mind only is alive," Ruth Hussey is at once recognisable as the woman who will re-awaken Mr. Melvyn’s faith in women just as quickly as he himself will arouse her interest in men. Any girl in a screenplay as beautiful as Miss Hussey is obviously destined for something more exciting than test-tubes, So here we have these two on a boat, falling rapidly in love, and between them hangs the shadow of the wife Mr. Douglas left behind him; and for a long time it is, as I say, despite its wisecracks and frivolity, just the routine eternal triangle. Even when Mr. Douglas, who turns out to be a dance band leader +with the soul of an artist, goes back to New York and, under the influence of his new-found love, composes a symphony which is a _ mixture of Brahms, Beethoven, and boogie-woogie. and which the critics (present company excepted) acclaim as a masterpiece; and when his ex-wife (Ellen Drew) turns up to cash in on his triumph and win him back; and when a battle of feminine wits begins for possession of Mr. Douglas -even then Our Wife is just a sausage. It is the ex-wife who puts in the pork — or the spice if your prefer it — by cunningly staging an accident to herself and pretending to be paralysed, confident that the noble Mr. Douglas will not desert her in her extremity. Miss Hussey, as the wife-to-be, has a very strong suspicion that it is all a fraud -but how to prove it? How to get the clever little. devil out of bed and convince Mr. Douglas that he is wasting his sympathy? This part of the picture is really good, with comedy neatly balanced by drama, and Miss Hussey and Miss Drew giving performances that put Melvyn Douglas well in the shade and make even Charles Coburn, as the fatherly professor, look to his laurels. It is so good, in fact, that I think our little friend at the top is quite justified in giving Our Wife a handclap.