The quest for the recaptured vigour of youth, that holy grail for the middle-aged and elderly, is at the heart of this wonderfully fun light-hearted comedy that showcases the brilliance of Cary Grant's comedic skills, and reveals that Ginger Rogers too was not only nimble on her pins, but also a very gifted comedienne.
Grant's character, Dr Barnaby Fulton, a chemist, works at a laboratory where they are trying to develop an anti-ageing, vigour-restoring product, a kind of whole-body viagra-type drug. Grant's aged, overweight boss, Mr Oliver Oxley (Charles Coburn), seems to have a personal stake in the speedy resolution of this product, connected to the person of his private secretary, Miss Lois Laurel (Marilyn Monroe), whose considerable personal charms outweigh her lack of secretarial skills.
But Barnaby's research has hit a roadblock. As the story begins, his mental preoccupation with "the formula" is showcased with some nice absent-minded professor style business, that also allows his relationship with wife Edwina (Rogers) to be shown as very solid and loving, with she being very understanding. It also allows Hank Entwhistle (Hugh Marlowe) the family friend and old flame of Rogers' youth to make his appearance.
The next day, in the lab, there is some excitement as it seems one of the experimental subjects, an elderly chimpanzee, is exhibiting extremely uncharacteristic youthful behaviour, and Mr Oxley, with Miss Laurel in tow, gets quite excited, till it is revealed to be a false alarm. Barnaby goes back to the drawing board, re-mixing his formula, but a young chimp, who has been observing him, concocts its own formula, to taste, and pours it into the water cooler stand, where it becomes mixed with the only drinking water available in the laboratory.
So begins a series of joyously comic set pieces where first Barnaby, then wife Edwina, then Barnaby and Edwina together, drink increasingly greater amounts of the formula, washing it down with water from the cooler, and mistakenly ascribing the effects to Barnaby's formula. In each case, it is an excuse for the actors to indulge in progressively more juvenile behaviour, much to the delight of the audience. Grant and Rogers are both fit and agile, and are impressively up to the physical demands of their roles, where they have to act and speak as much younger people. One imagines that the actors must have really had fun playing these parts, and the transformations are a joy to watch.
The conceipt of this 1952 film, with adults acting as children, is reminiscent of Dennis Potter's horrific comic psycho-drama "Blue Remembered Hills" (1979, part of BBC TV's "Play for Today" series), where adults play themselves as children, and sometimes the children they are playing choose to play at being adults, resulting in multiple levels of interpretation.
Never work with children or animals, film-makers are told, but Cary Grant and Ginger Rogers worked with both here, and emerged unscathed. Grant has such a great way of looking nonplussed and exhibiting his mental processes in physicality, and acting the character straight, not tongue in cheek.
Saw this film on 12 May and again on 3 August, with equal pleasure. My hesitation about awarding the film a very high mark is that it is lightweight in theme. On the other hand, it is perfectly executed.
References
- Director: Howard Hawks
- Writers: Ben Hecht, Charles Lederer, I.A.L. Diamond
- Starring: Cary Grant, Ginger Rogers, Marilyn Monroe, Charles Coburn, Hugh Marlowe, George Winslow
- Rating: Full price
- When seen: 21 May 2011
- Where seen: Home
- More information: IMDB | RottenTomatoes | Wikipedia
Written in WriteRoom, formatted using HyperEdit, posted from my MacBook Pro
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