VividSimon Simply Perfect

Stevecorp Don't listen to the negative reviews

RipDelight This is a tender, generous movie that likes its characters and presents them as real people, full of flaws and strengths.

Hayden Kane There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

morrison-dylan-fan Looking on the main ICM thread,I noticed a discussion about the original To Be or Not to Be,which led to me seeing Carole Lombard's brilliant, tragically final performance again. Checking BBC listings a few days later,I was thrilled to find that a Lombard was being shown that I've not heard of!,which led to me putting my name down.The plot:Stuck in a marriage that has gone off the rails long ago,Alec and Maida Walker spend each day having huge arguments with each other. Crossing paths with widow Julie Eden, Alec feels like entering a new relationship for the first time. Talking to Maida about getting divorced,Alec discovers that Maida will not let this marriage in name only end easily.View on the film:Proceeding when the Hays Code was at the peak of its powers,Richard Sherman's adaptation of Bessie Breuer's book is impressively frank about the broken state of Alec and Maida Walker's marriage,with the blunt exchanges between the couple having a sourness and a prickly nature which lay bare the disintegrated state of the relationship. Blossoming Eden and Alec's romance at X-Mas time,Sherman takes any hope of Christmas cheer away with a silk Melodrama which sows the quality light touch Alec has with Eden with the bitterness Maida can't stop expressing,even in front of Alec's deathbed! Working twice with Lombard in 1939,director John Cromwell & cinematographer J. Roy Hunt give the romance between Alec and Walker a playfulness with on the snow covered streets,which melts into a rich Melodrama atmosphere,as stylish overlapping images and soft close- ups expose the possible fatal clouds on the horizon.Taking the role after being labelled "box office poison" Kay Francis gives a magnetic performance as Maida,with Francis sinking her teeth into the take no prisoners exchanges Maida has with everyone. Toning down her comedic side, Carole Lombard (who replaced first choice Katharine Hepburn when she became "box office poison") gives a fantastic performance as Eden,who is given a breeziness from Lombard which gives the Melodrama a sincerity. Catching the eye of all the ladies, Cary Grant gives a marvellous performance as Alec,thanks to Grant balancing his leading man charms burning whilst delivering abrasive dialogue,as Alec and Maida find themselves in a marriage that is in name only.

secondtake In Name Only (1939)I thought I had seen pretty much every Cary Grant movie but this one evaded me and it was a thrill to discover, right from his best early period stuff. And he's good, and the movie is good, a story of being trapped in a bad marriage and then finding the right girl. And having your wife connive and become almost murderous to keep the marriage from ending.It's all about money, too, since Grant plays a wealthy young man. So his wife, played with utter, awful precision by Kay Francis, has her eye on the dollar as she sees him begin to stray. The new woman is a restrained Carole Lombard, who is lovable and sincere, even after it becomes clear that Grant will never get free of his wife. It's all drama, not quite soap opera, and it's convincing enough to work. Grant has some moments where he has to act with some deeper richness, not his strong point, but he hangs in there (especially if you are predisposed to liking him). But Lombard and Francis are pitch perfect, and if quite the opposites, equally so. Director John Cromwell had just directed Lombard in "Made for Each Other" (with Jimmy Stewart) and he has a way of bringing her out. This one is a better film, however, I think, so if you liked that other one, give this a look. Grant just filmed "Bringing up Baby" and is at the height of his lovable comic career. This would be his only film with Lombard, who actually might have been a good match in a lighter, wittier movie.Expect nothing less than a fast, smartly written, involving drama.

jjnxn-1 Considering the three main stars a curiously obscure drama from the legendary year of 1939. Superior soap opera contains some of the best work Cary Grant, Carole Lombard and Kay Francis ever put on film. Carole shows that she wasn't just a superb comedienne but a skilled dramatic actress. Cary is just right in blending the facile with the seriousness of the untenable situation he finds himself in. As good as both of them are, and they are great, even better is Kay Francis, a portrait in silky malevolence. This was inexplicably almost the end of her film career, she ended up in Poverty Row junk only a few years later and after watching this it's hard to understand how this didn't open up a whole new chapter for her as the wicked woman of cinema. Perhaps she was just too early for noir, she would have been perfect as a poison pit viper in many of those pictures.

blanche-2 Here's how I know a film is good: I was supposed to be doing something but I started watching "In Name Only." I said, well, I'll watch fifteen minutes (I had it on my DV-R). Ended up watching the whole thing.Cary Grant plays the unhappily married Alec Walker, and Kaye Francis is his wife Maida. It's a loveless marriage, though she claims otherwise. In fact, Alec has proof that Maida only loved one man, but rejected him because he didn't have any money. Maida's all about money and social standing.One day Alec runs into Julie Eden, a beautiful young widow, and the two strike up a friendship. Julie thinks it might be going somewhere until the night that Alec is in a car accident while driving home a friend of his wife's (who wants to have an affair with Alec). Julie finds out Alec is married and tells him she can't even be friends with him because it won't stay that way. Alec asks his wife for a divorce. She agrees, but she won't file in the states. She will do it discreetly, in Paris. Alec's parents, thinking it's just a vacation, accompany her. Guess what. It is just a vacation because somehow Maida doesn't get the divorce. And she doesn't intend to.The actors are all perfect in their roles, including Charles Coburn as Alec's mother and Nella Walker as his mother, both of whom love Maida and disapprove of Alec's interest in another woman. Grant and Lombard are beautiful together. Both were known for their excellent comic acting and timing, but drama came just as easily to both of them. Francis is the perfect patronizing wife, pretending martyrdom as she supposedly suffers in silence.Very absorbing and well worth seeing.