Holy
Matrimony
Directed by John M. Stahl
Starring: Monty Woolley, Gracie Fields, Laird Cregar
Grade: B- [61]
One
expects this comedy about an artist feigning his own death read more concisely
than it plays out on screen, but Monty Woolley was a savant at making the
stuffy seem worthwhile, and the situation’s no different here. There are
points lost for ending a modest running time with a tepidly-played courtroom
exchange (as was the trend in the ‘30s and ‘40s) but the Oscar-nominated script
so ably details the dilemmas of the noble classes in this time, through the
nobility of its central character himself, that the plucky insight atones for oversights
in plotting. It navigates that “Random Harvest” brand of rescue-through-cultural-escapism
comedy jauntily, and that was surely the aim.
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