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37 of 37 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Bewitching Comedy With Sexy Witch Veronica Lake, June 21, 2004
It's rare nowadays when you can say that you have seen a totally delightful comedy in the cinemas. That rare marriage of charming scenerio, ideally cast players, and romantic setting seems to be sadly a thing of the past which is why I always find "I Married a Witch", such enjoyable viewing. Here we have two very famous performers in dramatic veteran Fredric March, and Film Noir siren Veronica Lake playing against their usual "type" and having a field day cutting loose with this romantic screwball tale that combines sexy humour with elements of the supernatural. Based on the unfinished novel by "Topper", author Thorne Smith, "I Married a Witch", gave us a whole new image of what witches were like minus the warts and crooked nose and in much the same vein as the later legendary series "Bewitched", showed us witches who were playful and extremely sexy. Veronica Lake had I feel her most appealing role here and proved herself adept at frothy comedy and capable of far more than just looking slinky hiding behind her famous peek a boo hairstyle. Her chemistry with Fredric March is magical here (no pun intended!), and goes a long way towards making "I Married a Witch", the great success it is. Veronica Lake plays a Salem witch who along with her father is burnt at the stake on charges of scorcery. Before her death however she places a curse on the decendants of the man responsible for the burning, one Wallace Wooley. They are all cursed to marry "unhappily", and then we are treated to a series of highly amusing "historical snippets" showing how each generation of the Wooley family falls victim to the curse with wives they would probably much prefer to see burnt at the stake! The action then moves to the present where we see aspiring political candidate for the State Senate Jonathan Wooley (March) fully involved in the run up to not only his wedding to the hot tempered Estelle (Susan Hayward), daughter of media big shot J.B. Masterson (Robert Warwick), but also the upcoming election financed largely by his overpowering future father in law who is calling the shots in the upcoming election. During a storm both Jennifer (Veronica Lake), and her no good father Daniel (Cecil Kellaway) are freed from their imprisonment inside the tree that grew on the spot where they were burnt. Jennifer sets out to make life a complete misery for Jonathan during this important time in his life. She tries to create a scandal after Jonathan supposedly "rescues" her from a burning building by being "caught", in compromising positions in his bedroom right under the nose of both Estelle and disapproving housekeeper Margaret (Elizabeth Patterson). She tries to sabotage Jonathan's wedding day and in an hilarious scene causes a huge wind to come in and literally destroy the whole event. When she pretends to "die by gunshot", in an adjoining room causing an even bigger scandal which will set Jonathan up on a murder charge Jennifer however gets more than she bargained for. Earlier she had concocted a potion that will make Jonathan fall in love with her, Jonathan now accidently uses it to revive Jennifer and she finds herself madly in love with him! Fed up with Estelle's rages and her greedy father planning his every move Jonathan begins to realise that the disorder and excitement that Jennifer has brought into his ordered existence right down to flying through the air in a car, has revitalised him and love blossoms. When Jennifer's menacing and perpetually drunk father sees the change in her and threatens to take the families revenge out on Jonathan himself he takes Jennifer's powers away from him and ends up back in the bottle that will be his home for all eternity. We then see a flash forward to when Jonathan and Jennifer are a comfortably married middle aged couple and the witch streak is still there when their daughter begins feeling "right at home",playing with a broomstick. This slapstick piece of Americana was ably handled by none other than French director Rene Clair who really produced his best work during the 1930's before leaving Europe in the wake of Nazi aggression. Here however he seems totally at home with his rapid fire direction and rarely has a director got a more lively and delightfully kittenish performance out of Veronica Lake than Rene Clair does here. Fredric March and Lake combine extremely well here despite the very public clashes they had on the set during filming. Indeed March has rarely been more pleasing on screen where he is normally associated with such diverse dramatic roles as in "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde", "A Star is Born", and "The Best Years of Our Lives". He brings a frustratingly frantic skill to his acting that makes Lake's cool and deliciously wicked playing of this sexy witch seem even more amusing. Cecil Kellaway almost succeeds in stealing every scene he is in as the permanently drunk father of Lake and Susan Hayward, an actress I greatly admire has a quite difficult character to play here that nevertheless indicated what she was capable of delivering in later better roles. For 1942 the magical special effects are first rate where we have scenes of Jennifer and her father's disembodied presences in the form of smoke going inside bottles etc. First rate all the way for this time. Often passed off as the inspiration for the TV series "Bewitched", we will never know for sure if that was indeed the case. What we do know is that in "I Married a Witch", we are in possession of a delightfully wicked little comedy that crosses many sexual boundaries that might not have been gotten away with elsewhere at this time. For those viewers only used to seeing Veronica Lake as Alan Ladd's costar in numerous glossy Film Noirs do yourself a favour and check out her bewitchingly delightful performance opposite Fredric March in Rene Clair's "I Married a Witch". Grand entertainment.
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32 of 33 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
One of the greatest Hollywood comedies of the forties, December 28, 2001
I once did a list for a friend of the ten sexiest female characters in the movies. Veronica Lake's lovely witch ranked very high on that list. Although she starred in several other classic films from 1942 to 1946, this movie is easily my favorite. Much of her reputation today is based on her several appearances in film noir classics (THIS GUN FOR HIRE, THE GLASS KEY, and THE BLUE DAHLIA), but I actually preferred her in this film and to a lesser degree SULLIVAN'S TRAVELS. The rest of the cast is just as delightful. Fredric March is everything you could ask a romantic lead who is descended from Puritans to be, and Cecil Kellaway and Robert Benchley take turns stealing scenes. Of all the European directors forced by political turmoil in Germany and Italy to work in the US temporarily in the thirties and forties, Rene Clair probably had the most successful record. While his best work remains the extraordinary films he made in the early thirties working in France (SOUS LES TOITS DE PARIS, À NOUS LA LIBERTÉ, and, my favorite Clair film, LE MILLION), he nonetheless managed to make some exquisite films both in England (THE GHOST GOES WEST) and the US (IT HAPPENED TOMORROW and the marvelous comic mystery film AND THEN THERE WERE NONE). Much is made of the fact that I MARRIED A WITCH inspired the sixties TV show BEWITCHED, but I think this can be overdone. BEWITCHED was a situation comedy, whereas I MARRIED A WITCH depends much more on the irony of a witch falling in love with the ancestor of the Puritans who had cursed her a few hundred years before. In BEWITCHED, it is immaterial who Darrin and Samantha's forebears were, whereas the heart of the movie depends on ancestry. All lovers of classic comedy, classic Hollywood, or classic directors should definitely see this film if they haven't already.
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28 of 30 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Surrealist romantic fantasy in Hollywood., November 1, 2001
Rene Clair's greatest American film, with the old Surrealist turning what could have been merely a supernatural comic romp into something truly plangent. Veronica Lake plays the spirit of a witch burnt by Puritans in the 17th century, cursing the descendents of her denouncer to eternal marital malaise (the wonderful period prologues predate Monty Python by decades in their anachronistic lampooning of history). Fast forward to the present where the latest sap, Fredric March, is about to be married to a REAL witch (a fabulously imperious Susan Hayward), on the eve of running for governor as puppet for her media-baron father. Lake decides on some spirited revenge, attempting to destroy March's life by making him fall in love with her; only, through a botched spell, finding herself smitten. 'I Married a Witch' is more than an antique precursor to the incomparable TV series 'Bewitched'. it is one of Clair's most expertly constructed farces, full of his recognisable art-deco geometry; with the mixture of sex, magic and politics provoking irresistable set-pieces, such as the pair's introduction in a burning hotel; Lake's pointed attempts to seduce and compromise March by commandeering his bedroom; or the glorious, sustained fiasco of the wedding sequence, a real shotgun wedding, complete with hurricanes, kitsch operetta and murder. The corruption of 'interests'-dominated America and the impressionability of the electorate are satirised, while serious points are made about the country's historical legacy, the ghosts of its past materialising to avenge long-forgotten crimes. Lake has never been more purringly lovable - I can believe her as a sorceress, sliding down curved bannisters, unpeeling her fur coat in taxis; March is one of the few dramatic actors who could excel in comedy while retaining serious pathos; only Robert Benchley could manage to make selfless friendship seem like lecherous self-interest. But 'Witch' offers even more. The whole project of Surrealism was based on a very simple principle - the desire to make life, the everyday weighed down by banal routine, seem magical, fresh, new. Before Lake comes into his life, March, a kind of Everyman, was depressed and helpless, on the threshold of all kinds of prisons, domestic and professional. Lake's magic in this case is not simply the fantasy of genre, but a genuine transformative power, a spiritual enchantment, an offer of freedom through new insight, new sight. Where once fire was a political tool of oppression, here it is purifying and engendering. This is why the supernatural scenes here have an uncanny force you simply don't get in most fantasy films, that haunt you long after you've seen 'Witch'. The last ten minutes are hard to beat in American film, comedy or otherwise. Fantastic.
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