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Reviews
Presenting Lily Mars (1943)
Worth a look for Garland fanatics, but that's about it
A certain 30s sensibility through much of this, with Spring Byington reprising her role in You Can't Take It with You (sort of). Judy is always worthwhile, but Van Heflin is awful, just awful. His sudden transition from cranky genius to love-struck schoolboy is sudden and unconvincing, and his range of expression is paper-thin. Also, why director Taurog thought he needed to subject his audience to so much of Eggerth's ridiculous "singing" and "acting" is beyond me. Finally as another reviewer says, the finale is tacked on and not particularly interesting. Judy could have used a more engaging co-star (like one with actual talent!), but she's often funny, and when they let her swing in the musical numbers, she leaves you wishing for more.
A Slight Case of Murder (1938)
Gangster banter at its best
This movie falls securely into the beat-it-you-mugs style of lovable gangster films, fairly common in the '30s. The dialog is rife with all that faux street-tough lingo (ex., "Say, when do we tie on the feedbag?" for When do we eat?), made famous by the Dead End Kids and countless others. I happen to think it's pretty hilarious, but that's just me.
This is also a "screwball comedy." Now if you'eve ever wondered about what makes a comedy "screwball," well, the key might be a storyline that disdains all the pedestrian limits imposed by a too rigid attention to the realistic and believable. In other words, to borrow a famous example, Laurel and Hardy, say, are carrying a piano across a rope bridge over a raging river. Half way across, they meet a gorilla. You get the idea.
Anyway, I saw this movie when I was a teenager and thought it was one of the best of its era. Seeing it now, I still like it a lot, although it's perhaps not top-shelf. If Frank Capra had made this, the secondary storyline (gangster's daughter wants to marry a policeman!) would have been primary, and the primary storyline (gangster bootlegger, now that Prohibition is over, decides to try to be a "legit" businessman) would have been secondary, and it would have been a better movie (provided of course you had Jean Arthur and James Stewart in the roles of the young lovers). But really, there's a lot to like here.