Robert Riskin wrote some of Frank Capra's best films (including a Best Screenplay Oscar for It Happened One Night) and famously marched into Capra's office with an unopened ream of typing paper, threw it on the desk and said 'Let's see you put the Capra 'touch' on that' and this post-war Riskin screenplay is nothing if not a Capra thirties comedy set in the forties. Whilst it is always highly watchable it is also forgettable because 1) it's a thirties-type movie set in the forties, 2) although James Stewart was completely at home with Capracorn Jane Wyman wasn't; light years away from the gossamer touch of Jean Arthur she excelled in melodramatic weepies like Johnny Belinda and The Blue Veil and 3) William Wellman is not the best director to replicate a Capra movie. That being said it is, I repeat, highly watchable even if the chemistry between Stewart and Wyman is only marginally warmer than that between Bette Davis and Joan Crawford. Perhaps the best way to put it is that Grandview more than rates an E for Effort but can't quite equal Bedford Falls.
Review of Magic Town
