The follow-up to Francois Truffaut’s Stolen Kisses, BED AND BOARD (1970) has Antoine Doinel (Jean-Pierre Leaud) young, happy, in love with Claude Jade (one of the love interests from the previous film) and with everything to live for, even before his wife pops out a baby. Inevitably that doesn’t last as Antoine becomes entangled with Japanese businessman’s sexually aggressive wife. A good, quirky film that again ends with Antoine in a better place than I expected.“If I commit suicide with someone, I’d like it to be you.”
Howard Hawks’ BARBARY COAST (1935) has Miriam Hopkins arrive in Gold Rush-era San Francisco to marry rich only to learn her fiancee died after losing his money to Edward Robinson’s gambling hell. Not to worry, Robinson’s quite willing to assume her fiancee’s duties — and while Hopkins nixes that, she agrees to be a shill, looking sexy as she spins the rigged roulette wheel to separate miners from their gold.
The fatal flaw in this dull costume drama is that all the characters turn soft for no reason. Hopkins, initially mercenary, turns out to be a good girl even before she falls for intellectual miner Joel McCrea. A supporting low-life turns out to have a heart of gold that keeps him helping McCrea out. Robinson at the end becomes as ludicrously self-sacrificing as the female pirate in Anne of the Indies. “I love the fine names men give themselves to hide their greed and their love of adventure.”
Rewatching FATHER OF THE BRIDE (1950) confirms my feeling its much less about the wedding bills than the Steve Martin remake and more about Spencer Tracy’s bemusement as he deals with his daughter growing up, remodeling the house for the wedding, wife Joan Bennett wanting Liz Taylor to have the fantasy wedding she never did and Taylor discovering her husband wants to go fishing on their honeymoon. Very much a product of its time but mostly not in a bad way, though the faithful black servant and Taylor marrying at 20 have aged poorly. Given TYG started planning our wedding a year out, I’m curious if three months planning for a comparably large church wedding would have been the norm back then or a hand-wave to make the timeline work better for the story. “I took the precaution of wearing belt and suspenders.”
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