Danielle Darrieux was just 21 years old with 27 films behind her when she went to Hollywood for the first time. She or her connections chose well and she lights up the screen in this charming screwball comedy which cast her opposite Douglas Fairbanks Junior and Louis Hayward with outstanding comic support from Helen Broderick, Mischa Auer and Harry Davenport in a smaller but significant role. Screwball comedy did, of course, have its own rules and was not designed to stand up to scrutiny under a strong light but if we accept improbabilities as gospel then this is one of the most deft examples of the genre and a personal triumph for Darrieux who proved she could carry a Hollywood movie as well as she could a French - and in that same year she shot Abuse de Confiance with her then husband Henri Decoin (the third of nine films they would make together both during and after their marriage). At 21 she had still to develop from the delightful ingenue to the fine dramatic actress she became; in France she churned out stuff like this by the yard, all of the highest quality and in her first At Bat in Hollywood she showed non-French moviegoers just what they had been missing. A near-great movie. Catch it if you can.
Review of The Rage of Paris
