I Was a Male War Bride (1949)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

I Was a Male War Bride (1949) – H. Hawks

The title may say it all but it takes over an hour for the punchline to materialise.  Before that, Ann Sheridan and Cary Grant are, respectively, a US WAC and a French Captain on a mission in post-war Germany to help a scientist to escape to France.  They have one of those antagonistic wise-cracking relationships that you know will lead to love as soon as they stop fighting.  Director Howard Hawks allows the stars to find their own rhythm, which seems to keep Grant on the wrong foot while Sheridan gets the breaks.  After the plot sees the couple tie the knot, there is the little matter of getting Grant a visa to the United States (absurdly, you must remember he’s French).  Fortunately, there is a Congressional order allowing “war brides” of US service personnel to enter the US and thus begins Grant’s comic predicament and, wait for it, the final punchline.  Hawks somehow manages to sustain an epic gradual build and the film doesn’t disappoint.  Not laugh aloud funny but better than expected; I suspect audiences in the 1940s found it amusingly transgressive.