A charming, tasty, hurricane-funny, subtle, charming, original comedy about one of the most interesting, inseparable and inseparable "flats" of our life - a woman and her mysterious nature of origin, the "phenomenon" of her character, feelings, emotions and logic.
A woman is a very subtle, wayward, unusually changeable, amazingly reincarnating creature, the object of which has been raised, studied, analyzed almost since the Stone Age, when women already acted as the causal object of quarrels, misunderstandings and conflicts, well, who does not remember billions of cases when a grinning beauty seduced a stupid or inconsiderate object to show her “beauties”, and another, clearly not inspired by the fact that this very madam pays attention not to him, but to a potential competitor, gave her opponent a pretty bash. And sometimes such conflicts over a woman have reached wars of just a world scale!
Also in this film, the director Charles Walters, who had previously directed the remarkable work High Society, skillfully, skillfully, with irony, light smoke and mischief, and his inherent good nature, laughed at logic, women's principles and everything that carries with it an aura of femininity, attractiveness, simplicity and naivety, from wild male fuss to stupid conflicts.
The main character of this canvas is charming and ridiculous, naive, pretty and just imperceptibly explosive fool! One loses her luggage in a foreign city, then she is kicked out of two hotels, then she twice discourages one guy, trying to marry another, a womanizer, while seeking help and advice from a third, elegant aristocrat. It turns around, does something there, fusses, drives one crazy, making the other worried and furiously irritating the third. Walters also added to the enchantment of the picture a spice of contrasting style, an unusual plot, interesting techniques of “smooth sliding” of the camera lens and the original canvas of the script.
A mixture of several styles, techniques and “developments” make this film technically just unforgettable, skillful management of edited scenes and chic visual style make this film look like vaudeville, but the film remains a classic sitcom.
The film does not let you relax for a second, of course, there are no such trademark wild gags in the style of the Marx Brothers or Zucker, who laugh to the point of losing strength, but here sometimes you just choke with laughter! Especially hilarious magnificent pirouettes performed by Shirley McLaine!
But the whole film rose to the podium of the film Olympus thanks to this charming, this queen of the most naivety, this pretty and cute actress, MacLaine literally blew up the film with her childish, uncomplicated simplicity, genius naivety, pure simplicity, surprised by stupidity and just as pure as a tear transparency! In whatever situations did not get her heroine, she causes only a fit of laughter, a hurricane reaction of laughter, wild fun and at the same time, simple sympathy for all her misadventures!
Although this film was not received with the proper height in the United States, but it was magnificently received in other countries, and for her magnificent role, McLaine received as many as two awards - "British Academy" and a very, very prestigious award - "Silver Bear" at the Berlin Film Festival, and even received nominations for "Golden Bear" and "Golden Globe", all in place this speaks of McLaine's almost limitless talent for figurative equilibrism and improvisation, this actress played in many masterpieces!
It is a pity that the awards were bypassed by the legendary British “king of restraint” David Niven, who also played here at the height, he no less interestingly embodied his hypostasis and was no less worthy of attention from the public. I have always liked him with his restrained, skillful psychologically subtle aristocratic images, a kind of platonic dash, with intelligent, penetrating eyes, interesting facial expressions and a proud article of the oligarch Zarova.
I am not afraid to call this film a masterpiece. little noticed in us, poorly received in the United States but laid in the canons of romantic comedy in England and European countries, brilliant, funny, witty, romantically subtle, naive, deep, kind and damn interesting film!
10 out of 10