After
emigrating to the United States, Austrian-born legendary auteur Billy Wilder
never forgave actor Charles Boyer for nixing a pivotal scene involving a
cockroach from his screenplay for the film Hold
Back the Dawn and vowed there and then to start making his own films with a
strong emphasis on retaining final cut.
His first English language feature as a director was the screwball romantic
comedy of disguise and mistaken identity: The
Major and the Minor. Starring
Academy Award winner Ginger Rogers, fresh off of her recent win for Kitty Foyle and future The Big Clock star Ray Milland, the film
is a mixture of Wilder’s trademark snappy dialogue, bity wit and visual panache
which takes a straightforward story and transforms it into a wildly
entertaining romp.
After
quitting her job as a scalp massager, Susan Applegate (Ginger Rogers) decides
to return from New York City to her home in Iowa. Upon arrival at the train station, she
discovers she’s just short of the ticket price with only enough to afford a
child fare ticket. Thus begins her wild
plan to disguise herself as a child in order to afford the ticket, creating
ample room for a variety of screwball and slapstick comic gags that will remind
modern viewers of the antics unleashed by Martin Short in Clifford. Soon however she
meets with a military man, Major Philip Kirby (Ray Milland) and takes refuge within
his boxcar, leaving ample room for comically awkward sexual tension and
jealousies from his fiancée Pamela (Rita Johnson) as well as an unlikely
alliance with her teenage sister Lucy (Diana Lynn).
An
early precursor to the provocative comic antics unleashed in Billy Wilder’s later
works with Marilyn Monroe such as The
Seven Year Itch and hiding out in disguise ala Some Like It Hot, Wilder’s first swing at Hollywood is a still
riotously funny comic romp with more than a few delightful sight gags peppered
throughout. Based upon the stage play Connie Goes Home by Edward Childs
Carpenter and adapted for the screen by Wilder and frequent collaborator Charles
Brackett, the film wound up being semi-autobiographical for Ginger Rogers who
herself feigned her younger age when she was doing vaudeville to afford the
fare.
Rogers,
who is in top comic form here, employs everything from her expressionistic face
and deer-in-headlights eyes as well as even pulling out some of her tap-dance
routines seen in her pictures with Fred Astaire. Ray Milland, who would soon win an Academy Award
for his future collaboration with Wilder on The
Lost Weekend, is equally animated and delightfully silly with a signature cross-eyed
gaze.
Given director Wilder’s background
in German cinema, visually for a screwball comedy the film looks stunning. Photographed by Hold Back the Dawn cinematographer Leo Tover, Wilder employs a
variety of innovative visual techniques and specific lenses to create a dynamic
looking picture with carefully placed visual information on all sides of the
frame. Wilder would eventually master this
technique with later ventures including Sunset
Boulevard and The Apartment yet
watching him hone his craft in the early stages is an exciting sight to behold.
A
straightforward and unpretentious crowd pleaser showcasing the comedic talents
of its two leads and filmmaker Billy Wilder’s masterful command of the
cinematic medium, The Major and the Minor
still is one of the funniest films of its era and proof positive Mr. Wilder
was one of the truly gifted visual artists in the act of figuring things
out. Moreover, after his dismaying
experience working on Hold Back the Dawn,
Wilder vowed he would make the most commercially appealing picture he could
think of so he would never be at the mercy of a typewriter for the rest of his
life ever again. While it isn’t near the
heights reached by his later masterworks that would make him a household name
in the film community, The Major and the
Minor as it stands is one Hell of a solid debut!
Score:
- Andrew Kotwicki