Screening Log

This new site feature is a collective effort to summarize our viewing habits. Occasionally, you will find titles here that are coming to a theater near you, in addition to films viewed on television, and even films viewed in piecemeal. The screening log is archived each month; to view past entries select a month in the menu below.

April 2007 activity

Total Log Entries: 50

Total Comments: 20

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The Awful Truth / USA / 1937

Two scenes toward the end of The Awful Truth provide as good a working definition of love as I can think of. In the first scene, Cary Grant bungles his way into a recital being performed by his soon-to-be ex-wife, Irene Dunne; in the second, Dunne bungles her way into the home of Grant’s new fiancée’s family. Each proves him- or herself willing to suffer embarrassment for the other’s sake; the other, recognizing this humiliation, chooses not only to share in it, but also to laugh at it.

Buffoonery, humiliation, and laughter may not be everyone’s idea of true romance, but they nonetheless combine to form an intimate understanding: Love is an inside joke for two people, conscious and accepting of weakness and idiosyncrasy, and constituting a shared view of the world. At the back of the auditorium, Cary Grant tries and fails to noiselessly extricate himself from a pile of furniture and tousled hair, and unlike the disapproving crowd of audience members, Irene Dunne gazes at him with pity, amusement, understanding — and a lust that is so obvious, it borders on indecency.

See also: My Favorite Wife>

by Leo Goldsmith | Source: Sony Pictures DVD
06 Apr 2007 6:07 PM | Submit Comment

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