A superlative romantic comedy, although Stevens’ entries in the genre lack the speed and sass of his best contemporaries. His films make it up with thoughtfulness and sensitivity: punctuated by outbursts of zaniness, carried along by pleasant vibes of charm and sweetness, they are basically earnest affairs. Frank Capra, plainly, has more edge. At the same time, they never drift into meaningless sentiment or crass manipulation, regardless of the material (and consider how easy it would have been with something like the laughable-on-paper, much-afflicted lovers of Penny Serenade) — Stevens’ films are above all grounded in moments of refreshing human intimacy.

Merrier’s plot speaks to both the time and a screwball sensibility: in a small gesture of patriotism, amidst war and a housing shortage, kind and orderly Jean Arthur offers half her apartment for rent, and is soon burdened with cunning and pushy Charles Coburn, who like any good opportunist quickly rents half of his half to handsome and taciturn Joel McCrea. Yes, there are outbursts of zaniness: Arthur’s attempt to strictly regulate their morning routine quickly turns into a well-choreographed slapstick interlude; McCrea first lets down his solemn demeanor by barking like a seal in the shower. And charm and sweetness it has in profusion: how could it help but, with Jean Arthur rumba-ing about the frame? Oh, it’s all absolutely irresistible, of course.

But it’s those intimate moments that make it something really special, too: of course Arthur and McCrea will resolve their roommate squabbles, little misunderstandings, and the matter of her awfully practical fiance. If you love these movies, you don’t mind the formula, and you will cling to every little variation on the theme just to feel time and again as if this were the first couple you ever girlishly rooted for. Of course these things will happen, and you will engage the film as, predictably, they do. But these things don’t always — or, in fact, at all often — happen with such an overwhelming sense of natural urgency. Women are not always as unassumingly ensorceling as Jean Arthur is here. Men are not always turned into helpless zombies by sheer lust as is Joel McCrea. I could never adequately describe the genuine intimacy and real connection and sheer yearning (oh, what in the world is there to top sheer yearning?) of the two sequences that really sell this romance: first, unable to keep their eyes off one another, they are drawn together in the rumba they had shared previously only rooms apart; then, unable to keep their hands off one another, they walk home together and barely resist consummation there on the brownstone steps. Then the embarrassment of realizing they are still roommates; then the unguarded exchange of confidences through thin bedroom walls.

The film is full of such lovely (and quite racy) moments. It avoids the easy happily-ever-after; it never goes to cheap cynicism. Perhaps it is of its time and of its ilk and nothing more — if George Stevens is great at what he does, he’s still no master — but all the same, this is what a film looks like when it strikes a perfect balance.