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The Awful Truth
Some notes on the occasion of a distracted viewing in the neighborhood of my 100th.
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I haven’t had much to say about anything lately — delighting some devious characters who frequent this blog; increasingly disturbing to me — but it has at least afforded me the opportunity to do some much-needed behind-the-scenes tidying and an overall redesign. Typically, when I settle in to spend hours mindlessly updating this and that, I put on a tape of old TCM broadcasts and rewatch the screwball comedies that most delight me. They make for great idle background noise, and as someone who doesn’t generally enjoy rewatching films, I find a lot of them stand up to repeat casual examination very well.
But when The Awful Truth comes up in the cycle… it’s just not something I can watch casually, or glance up at once every ten minutes. It’s so rich, so densely suffused with little moments of honesty and subtle comic gestures, that I can never really give it anything but my full attention. For non-stop hilarity and cinematic genius give me Bringing Up Baby every time. But for deep and candid human understanding, covering the truer-to-life spectrum from playful sparring to awkward silences to heartfelt yearning, no one and nothing approaches the team of McCarey, Grant and Dunne.
One day I fully intend to give this film the treatment it deserves (and that my embarrassing viewing history demands, as justification), but for now I’ll just marvel at a couple moments that struck me this time.
Every romantic comedy requires a reason to keep two lovers apart until the final moments, but here there is not a contrivance among the parade of little misunderstandings and willful acts of self-sabotage that bring Lucy and Jerry Warriner within sixty seconds of the finalization of their divorce. So rare for a screwball comedy (a genre I certainly admire for its feeling of making it up as it goes along — and this one was partially improvised!), the actions and changes of heart are always perfectly in line with what one learns about their characters within the first ten minutes: these are the smug idle rich, the champagne cocktail-sipping urban elite, who don’t take much of anything very seriously; they married on a whim after a quarrel at a pet shop, and will just as lightly divorce one another for sport caring for little other than who shall gain custody of the dog, Mr “Asta” Smith. Yes, life is a game, and whether or not their respective suspicions of infidelity are true (loose ends the film rather brilliantly refuses to tie up — neither one’s name is cleared, really) it’s plain both are quite comfortable lying to the other until they’re caught… orange-handed? (Bad.) They’re frivolous, scheming, proud, smarter than anyone in the room (so that, quite frequently, they seem to talk in a sort of code of inside jokes and meaningful glances that sail right over others’ heads) and obvious to all but themselves, of course, made for one another.
The film runs just short of BUB’s manic pace, and every incident that proceeds from their flighty rush to divorce court is believable, resulting variously in moments of comedic perfection and unexpectedly bracing romantic longing (at peaks, it achieves both), and it’s as cynical as it is honest, despite screwball-silly underpinnings — naturally Lucy cheats to gain custody of Mr Smith, naturally both choose a succession of partners who are nowhere near their league in terms of intelligence and lifestyle. They like to fight and they like to play, but they know one another’s buttons so well that out of bitterness, scorn or hurt they occasionally push too hard; Dunne and Grant are both talented enough to let the pain of this flash across their faces momentarily, and then to cover it up in a prideful facade a moment later. And then there are gestures of unexpected compassion, pity, and once in a while a near-admission of love sustained… only they’ll never be there at the same moment until the end of the picture. Their catty circle of friends and romantic runners-up are no match for them; of course they are each their own worst enemy.
Well in my generalized ruminating I’ve begun to lose track of the few specific moments I really did intend to capture this time — only it comes to this: at all times they’re both pretty well aware of a given situation, hampered only by pride but by no means a lack of information or decision-making power. I’m thinking of, for instance, the scene where Jerry has let himself into Lucy’s apartment for a drink and Dan shows up; she pins Jerry behind a door so his unseemly presence will go unnoticed, while Dan stumbles over a preteen verse he’s written, begs for a first kiss, and giddily pronounces “I’m so happy I could eat a whole steak!” At this point, Jerry could announce himself and ruin her engagement to Dan but this corn-fed mama’s boy is hardly a threat; the poetry merits no more than a bemused eye roll. No, he’d much rather play with Lucy, tickling her with a pencil from behind the door — it’s an intimate moment, not only because he clearly knows her most sensitive spots, but because Dan Leeson’s bumbling presence hardly registers. The interplay is between Jerry and Lucy.
Well, I could go on like this for ages but the point of even starting this has by now entirely escaped me and I’ve been away from my “real work” for too long. That’ll do then for just scratching the surface — and really I’ll tighten my argument and write this thing properly eventually. Don’t be surprised if I give it another hundred viewings first, and love it just a little more each time.
As a final offering, just one of the little moments, forgetting themselves between barbs, that encapsulate what this film is all about:
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Oh, no wait, one last. There are at least three moments which blatantly illustrate what I’m talking about, that Irene Dunne exhibited some of the most explicitly sexual behavior under the Code and not only got away with it, but went on to be remembered as unfailingly ladylike. Unbelievable, that; and unbelievable too that Jerry Warriner could withstand this sort of thing for a full ninety days. I submit to you:
Knowing Lucy has an appointment to meet her voice teacher and presumed lover Armand, Jerry bursts into his studio expecting to find the two in each other’s arms but instead interrupts a perfectly innocent recital, Lucy mid-song. Attempting to look cool and unconcerned, Jerry takes a seat and leans casually against the wall, loses his balance and falls — twice. It’s one of the most memorable moments in the film, as the end of a note gives way to her gentle laughter, but add to that the look on her face: pity and amusement yes, but also undisguised desire. It is, as she later admits to Aunt Patsy, the moment she realizes she still loves Jerry.
After correspondingly embarrassing herself for love, acting out the part of Jerry’s drunk and blowsy sister Lola for the benefit of his fiancee’s family, Lucy convinces Jerry to drive her to Aunt Patsy’s cabin where, she hopes, she’ll finish the seduction before their divorce becomes official at midnight. Amused as he was by her performance, now he grumbles, “Just think, if it hadn’t been for you I’d've missed all this.” With suggestively arched eyebrows and a shocking low growl, she returns, “That’s right.”
Once at the cabin, all sobriety and longing, in separate bedrooms with only a poorly latched door, a pesky cat, and their pride standing between them, the two tease, seduce, and retreat from one another until all manner of doors — metaphorical and physical — can be opened. Probably holding the distinction for being the Golden Age actress who most frequently ended her comedies in bed, before Cary gets himself permanently on her side of the threshold Irene confuses him with a wordy speech on the state of their relationship, wiggles her eyebrows at him again, dismisses him with a throaty “Goodnight,” and falls back on the mattress.
“You’re all confused, aren’t you?” Ahh… it’s the sexiest damn movie.
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Oh, I was hoping to come in and tease you some more, but I see you are beginning to write again. But I am glad to see it is on my favorite subject.
All these little moments you want to point out have somewhat inspired me to rewatch The Awful Truth. Undoubtedly you will pursuade me to (please do). I remember that pencil thing being awesome–probably a great symbol of the Screwball romance. Love for the sophisticated elite is not about the grand romantic gestures, but about the immature and frivolous tease. Humanity has spent history talking about the Great Romances, Love Poetry charged with the subtle as Epic, the inscribed tragedy and miraculous illumination of “true love.” ['Love' is one of society's most irresponsible words.] The Screwball rejects all that baggage–thankfully!
Love is a pencil in the back, it is digging for bones in the backyard, it is picking one another’s pockets. Hmm… or maybe that’s just sex?
Comment by Mango — 5 May 2008 @ 5 May 2008Watch The Awful Truth again!! And again and again…
And write some more lovely things about love. I love it.
Maybe it is just sex; a few months ago I read an article by one person who stretched so far as to claim that when Lucy says to Aunt Patsy* “We had some grand laughs together” she means orgasms. LOL it was kind of a scholarly written piece, so it was entertaining to read her trying to phrase the argument.
(*In one of the film’s greatest mysteries I’d like to unravel, it is Patsy to everyone but Lucy, for whom it is consistently Patty. A gag? What does it all meaaan?)
Comment by Lauren — 5 May 2008 @ 5 May 2008OK, I am sure I will watch it again soon. It’s not as fast-paced or screwy as I like, but I am sure I can find lots of sexy moments to contemplate. I will definitely write more on love–it’s a blast writing about it.
P.S. Why is your Pre-Code post closed to comments?
Comment by Mango — 5 May 2008 @ 5 May 2008Wordpress is funky, sometimes it turns off commenting when I edit a post. Back up for comment now!
The Awful Truth is detail-oriented. You must be patient and observant: there’s without a doubt as much to thrill anyone as in any fast-paced screwball, but not always at the surface level.
Detail-oriented. *scoff* Someone’s been writing too many resumes.
Comment by Lauren — 5 May 2008 @ 5 May 2008I will definately seek this film out… my knowledge of Hollywood films from the fifties and earlier is blotchy, generally filled in with whatever Criterion Collection films cover it, and some works by the big name directors. Naturally I have seen His Girl Friday, and Arsenic and Old Lace, and consider Cary Grant reason enough to see something.
I was not even aware there was a pre-code period to Hollywood (that was not covered in my introductory course). So begins my education.
Comment by mike rot — 9 May 2008 @ 9 May 2008