Customer Reviews

The More the Merrier [VHS]

5 star:		(27)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Since I uncovered this tragically overlooked gem in Hollywood's crown, thanks to NY Times and their list of 1000 best films ever made, I've watched it four times and it just gets better with repeated viewing. That alone is a tremendous recommendation for anyone who likes a good romantic comedy, especially if you've found yourself let down by the more mindless entries into the genre (the recent "Must Love Dogs," for example).

Some fine synopses of "The More the Merrier" can be found elsewhere on this page, so I'll not be repetitive. Let me just say how wonderful it is to find a film that perfectly captures that magical moment in time when two people have the locomotives of their lives derailed by finding each other completely by accident. Well, OK, not completely; Mr. Dingle is the engineer of this particular train wreck, the sheer joy of which is not fully clear to anyone until the final five minutes of the film, an ending that is so beautifully planned, constructed, and executed that it gives me goose bumps.

The other marvelously pleasurable aspects of this film include the realistic way the dialogue unfolds. Most films have had the life rehearsed out of them; "OK, I say this, then pause for a beat so the audience can laugh, then you say this while I wait to respond to what you've said." In TMtM, on the other hand, characters sometimes mumble, dialogue overlaps, there are scenes when two characters seem to be ad libbing at the same time, etc., just like the viewer is a fly on the wall rather than watching a polished Hollywood product. Ah, 'tis a rare and precious thing, this.

And finally, TMtM reminds us how sad it is that today's films usually substitute nudity for sexiness. I have rarely seen a sexier scene than the one where Joel McCrea is walking Jean Arthur home. He just can't keep his hands off her shoulders, neck, and face, and she half-heartedly fends him off; she has a loveless engagement to be married, and he is a distraction...but ultimately she can't withstand her own feelings for him. It's heartbreakingly sweet and sensuous, without being the least bit prurient. Beautiful work.

Obviously this has quickly moved into the top 10 of my own personal list of 200 favorite films, and it carries my highest recommendation without reservations. Enjoy!

The line that serves as title for my review is spoken by the great Charles Coburn all through the movie, and at the end of the film it is used as a "subtle" innuendo of what's going on...you'll know what I'm talking about when you see this great film.

I am a fan of pre-codes, in other words, films that were released before the Production Code was fully enforced (1930-1934), but this does not mean I do not love too, films produced during its full enforcement, because it never ceases to amaze me how certain masters of the American Cinema (Hitchcock, Preston Sturges, Lubitsch, etc.) found ways of subtly insinuating what could not be fully showed or directly told onscren.

This film takes place during the severe house (and men) shortage in World War II Washington D.C. and tells us the story of how the funny cupid-mister-fix-it character played by Coburn (Mr. Dingle) gets "clean-cut" Joel McCrea (Joe Carter) into Jean Arthur's (Miss Milligan) small Apartment. Previously, he has managed to get inside of it himself.

I had seen McCrea and Arthur together in the screen for the first time in the Early Talkie "The Silver Horde" (1930), a nice and entertaing adventure yarn (she plays his spoiled rich fiancée), but neither Arthur had yet blossomed into the excellent actress and deft comediene she was yet to become in the mid 1930's, nor had the great chemistry between both stars developed the way it did in this gem of a movie.

As I said before, in spite of censorship's shortcomings and the Code's restrictions, great directors such as George Stevens (the man who gave us Kate Hepburn's "Alice Adams" or Liz Taylor's "A Place in the Sun") knew how to handle the scenes and show us, insinuating it in a subtle way, in this case, the sexual tension between Connie Milligan and Joe Carter. In fact, never I had seen McCrea or Arthur in such sexy-romantic-"physical" scenes (by 40's standards), showing the love and desire they feel for each other, all the longing for "more".

McCrea seems so much "passionate" in his romantic secenes, than usual, and Arthur looks sexy to the hoot. What a fine figure this lady had! She surely looks much younger than the 43 years old she was when she made this movie and gets to wear some sexy-outfits (I liked her especially with her hair "loose") and even a translucid (or look-through) black nightgown.

Trust me, this is one of the most engaging, romantic, amusing, comedies from Hollywood's Golden Era, that you can get.

Now, one more time Columbia-Sony leads us into mistake, with its statement on the back-cover of the DVD Case, that this film was "remastered in high definition". The quality of the transfer is so-so, pretty uneven I'd dare to say, with many imperfections. But then, it's the only DVD edition available of this masterpiece, so buy it anyway! You won't regret it.

"The More the Merrier" is a film that I wish I had heard of before. This is one of many great films directed and produced by the legendary George Stevens. Connie Milligan (Jean Arthur) is a young woman with patriotism in mind, who decides to rent out half of her apartment to someone, due to the housing shortage in wartime Washington DC. Connie had a female roommate in mind, but, that isn't what she gets. Mr. Benjamin Dingle (Charles Coburn) shows up at her front door--an elderly, retired millionaire, whose itinerary is two days ahead of schedule, and is seeking lodging, since his suite at the hotel is still booked up. Connie's grudgingly forced attempts to compromise with the gentleman, without starting a scandal, is just the beginning of the screwball humor in the film......
Mr. Dingle decides that Connie needs a clean-cut nice young man...not the uptight, too old fiancee she is currently seeing. Joe Carter (Joel McCrea) literally shows up on the frontstep, and the opportunity presents itself for Mr. Dingle to engage in matchmaking, as he rents out his half of the apartment to the young man.

I enjoy the broad humor of this film, that isn't at all dated in my perception. Also , the leads are likeable and believeable in their roles. The direction of the humorous scenes was brilliantly subtle, and is so much more engaging than the over-the-top, cartoonish comedies of today. It's like watching a beautifully choreographed dance......
Enjoy it......

THE MORE THE MERRIER was one of the biggest hits of 1943 and one of the very best comedies of the 1940's. It received many Oscar nominations and won the Best Supporting Actor award for Charles Coburn as well as earning the great Jean Arthur her only nomination (a crime!) for the Best Actress Academy Award. This is a truly amazing comedy that touches on virtually every comedy genre from slapstick to romantic to verbal bantering. Coburn is great fun although I do agree with one reviewer his character at times really pushes the envelope and comes close to being out of line but fortunately the film is so light-hearted, well acted and directed the character's presumptuous edges never become unpleasant. As great as Colburn is this movie really belongs to Jean Arthur and Joel McCrea, two great stars who may have just missed being superstars by a hair but here (as on many other occasions) showing they had the talent and charisma to equal their more celebrated contemporaries. Neither of them have ever been as sexy as they are here, Jean's sloppy brushing of her teeth not withstanding. One of the most amazing things about the movie is practically a three-person play despite running 104 minutes, quite long for a comedy from the era. Richard Gaines as Jean's nerdy steady has the only sizable supporting role, everyone else virtually plays a bit part. This movie has some of the best laugh outloud gags of any film I've ever seen with a tender romance nicely bubbling under the surface.

I own the VHS release and while most of the print is quite flawless, it has many bad spots in it with lines, dirt, and scratches. I'm very disappointed to read in another review that the DVD version is not much better, perhaps the same. This seems to be a consistent problem with vintage Columbia films released on video or DVD, I've noticed similar problems with MISS GRANT TAKES RICHMOND and THEODORA GOES WILD. Hasn't it ever crossed these people's minds to use multiple prints of a film and cut out the bad bits in a superior print and splice in the same scenes that are not damaged in a second print? That would really not be much of an effort. It seems as if Columbia doesn't even screen some of the prints they use as their masters. As I said most of the picture quality is fine but there is really no excuse for poor quality scenes when you know the studio owns multiple copies of the films.

Was I ever wrong. For years I looked upon Charles Coburn as a fat, porcine old gentlemen who always had a big, wet-chewed cigar in his mouth. I was so awed by the cheesy melodrama of Kings Row that I barely noticed his startling performance as Dr. Gordon, the cruel, vindictive surgeon who made Drake McHugh cry out, "Where's the rest of me?" Then I saw The Lady Eve, and then The Devil and Miss Jones. And now, The More the Merrier. Not only could Coburn define surgery at its worst, I finally realized that he was one of the most subtle and skilled practitioners of high-class comedy. Coburn won the Academy Award for best supporting actor for his work in The More the Merrier. He could just as justifiably won it for Eve and Miss Jones. As good a movie as The More the Merrier is, and as good as Jean Arthur and Joel McCrea are, Charles Coburn as Benjamin Dingle, "a well-to-do retired millionaire," who turns out to be an uncommonly sly cupid, refocuses the movie every time he's on screen.

We're in the middle of WWII in Washington and housing is almost impossible to come by. Connie Milligan (Jean Arthur) places an ad for a roommate to share her two-bedroom flat. Benjamin Dingle (Coburn) is in town on business and without a hotel room. He spots the ad, bulls his way past a hoard of eager applicants and simply fast talks his way in. He notices that this attractive young woman seems to have a lonely life. In fact, she's engaged to a Washington bureaucrat as romantic as an officious waiter. It's not long before Dingle spots Joe Carter (Joel McCrea) looking for a room. Joe is tall and good-looking. Within minutes Dingle has subleased half of his subleased room to Joe. It won't be long before the three of them are falling over each other. But will Connie and Joe fall for each other? Dingle, with guile and good-intentions, is going to give it a try.

This could be as conventionally predictable as a Luci-Desi episode. Thanks to director George Stevens, a bright, funny script, and Arthur, McCrea and Coburn, it's anything but. The More the Merrier is a classy and funny romantic comedy that, especially in the first half, comes close at times to a classic Marx Brothers routine. It even helps at times to appreciate many of the situations as comedy routines, so highly polished by first-rate actors that the comedy pile-ups and split-second timing seem spontaneous. Let's see...for starters there's the "explaining the morning action plan with diagram" routine with Arthur and Coburn, the "who gets the bath, who gets the egg" routine with Coburn, Arthur and McCrea, the "where's my pants" routine with Coburn, the "Connie and Joe and the leather traveling bag" routine with Arthur and McCrea, and the "Who did you go with to the beach" routine with Arthur and McCrea. Sure, we have three actors playing cute...but if they ever appear that they're playing cute it won't be either cute or funny. Arthur and Coburn are experts at this kind of straight-faced, split-second community comedy, and McCrea, it turns out, is good at it, too.

As often as Jean Arthur in the Thirties and Forties had some excellent leading men to work with -- McCrea, Cary Grant, Gary Cooper, Charles Boyer, James Stewart and Ronald Colman among others -- it might just be that her perfect partner in comedy was Charles Coburn. They starred in three pictures together:
The Devil and Miss Jones in 1941, The More the Merrier in 1943 and The Impatient Years in 1944. Arthur was a strong, skilled actress who could be fey, puzzled, endearing, innocently romantic, completely natural, sexy and subtle. Her voice, instantly recognizable, helped define her screen persona. She could come across as vulnerable, but she more than held her own in her movies. I can't think of any movies she made after the mid-Thirties that weren't defined as "Jean Arthur movies." Coburn, old enough to be her grandfather, was so good an actor -- a comic actor when called upon -- that he managed to make a balance with her that is part of the mystery of why some actors click together and others don't. It's to his skill that he was able to make this connection with other actors as well. Just watch him in The Lady Eve share any scene with Barbara Stanwyck.

The More the Merrier is one of Hollywood's proudly sweet-natured romantic comedies, with a lot of fast-paced physical action thrown in. Even the sentimentality is amusing. The movie was remade in 1966 as Walk, Don't Run with Gary Grant, Samantha Egger and Jim Hutton. For lessons in how to turn a bright, clever romantic comedy into a plod, Cary Grant's last film, unfortunately, is the one to see.

I love Jean Arthur as much as any actress in Hollywood. Her performances, which came immediately to my mind, are those in Capra films, especially 'Mr. Smith Goes to Washington', where the way she supports James Stewart seems moving to me. In this film Jean(if I may say so) is at her best in her prime beauty and coquetry. Indeed the performances of Charles Coburn (probably his best) and Joel McCrea are priceless, but I find myself watching all through the playing time.This film has never been imported to Japan and I have watched it for the first time in this VHF form.

I love, love, love this movie, and i'm so excited it's finally coming on DVD. I feel similarly to 'debalan89', because our family has lines that we have as jokes,etc. I think it's by far the best Jean Arthur movie - and Joel McCrea is great. Charles Coburn is fantastic. I wish there were more movies like this. I have searched, believe me!
As far as other reviewers who didn't find it funny; it seems hard to believe!
It's an undiscovered gem - i guess that's why it took so long for the DVD to arrive..

This has to be the greatest romantic comedy I have ever seen! One of my favorite genres, and I am a pretty tough critic, but I just LOVE this movie...it's hilarious and very romantic, unlike many so-called romantic comedies, which concentrate on the laughs. The cast is great- Jean Arthur, Charles Coburn and the hugely underrated Joel McCrea in (IMHO) their best performances. It only won one Oscar but it deserved a lot more...with Casablanca...tough year. One of the things I love about this movie is the almost bittersweet ending- it is after all war-time and life goes on. Watch it please!

One of the brightest and most popular WWII comedies, "The More The Merrier" is finally on DVD with what appears to be the typical medicore quality from Columbia. Like "The Awful Truth", the quality is medicore...lines, blotches, pops, and plenty of dirt. This one's also a bit blurry at times.

Transfer aside, this George Stevens production has one of the best performances from Jean Arthur, not mention Joel McCrea's typically dead-pan but brightly amusing performance. Supporting them is the great character actor, Charles Coburn, who stole the movie with his amazing comedic performance...and he bagged the Best Supporting Oscar for his performance.

I couldn't be happier to finally get this on DVD...but Columbia has no idea how to mine their vaults.

The plot, timing, and acting of The More The Merrier is a delight. Jean Arthur shines (attention gentlemen: she is at her sexiest in this film!) in her best role. Joel McCrea and Charles Coburn are equally perfect as two men who share the apartment with Arthur. You won't forget this one, especially "damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!"