Made for Each Other (1939)
DVD5 | VIDEO_TS | NTSC | 4:3 | 720x480 | 5700 kbps | 4.2Gb
Audio: English AC3 2.0 @ 192 Kbps | Subtitles: English, French, Spanish
01:32:00 | USA | Comedy, Drama, Romance
DVD5 | VIDEO_TS | NTSC | 4:3 | 720x480 | 5700 kbps | 4.2Gb
Audio: English AC3 2.0 @ 192 Kbps | Subtitles: English, French, Spanish
01:32:00 | USA | Comedy, Drama, Romance
Young lawyer meets and marries girl after knowing her one day. Takes bride home to meet his mother who disapproves of the marriage. Lawyer thinks everything will be fine as he moves up the ladder of the law firm. He doesn't and things get tough. A baby makes things even tougher.
Director: John Cromwell
Cast: Carole Lombard, James Stewart, Charles Coburn, Lucile Watson, Eddie Quillan, Alma Kruger, Irving Bacon, Raymond Bailey, Bonnie Belle Barber, Louise Beavers, Ward Bond, Donald Briggs, Harlan Briggs, Lane Chandler, Frederick Chapin, Russ Clark, Monte Collins, James Conaty, Esther Dale, Harry Davenport, Edgar Dearing, Harry Depp, Robert Elliott, Fern Emmett, Betty Farrington, Mary Field, Ruth Gillette, Russell Hopton, Olin Howland, Arthur Hoyt
The always excellent Carole Lombard takes on a straight dramatic role in 'Made For Each Other', playing wife to James Stewart's struggling 'everyman' husband.
John Mason, a promising young lawyer(James Stewart)meets Jane(Carole Lombard)and they marry impulsively after knowing each other for only one day. Unfortunately, married life isn't peachy keen as promised, with the struggling couple having to postpone their honeymoon for John's work, put up with John's interfering mother (who lives with them) and a chronic lack of money.
Lombard is a revelation (for me at least, I've only seen her in comedy before this)in a straight dramatic role. There are no zany antics from her as seen in the likes of 'Nothing Sacred' or 'My Man Godfrey'; here she excels at playing melodrama. Carole's beauty is particularly luminous in this one, and she has the opportunity to show her talent for conveying complex emotions when the script calls for her to despair over her dying baby.
James Stewart takes on a familiar role as the 'insignificant' John (note the use of simplistic first names to highlight the supposed 'ordinariness' of the narrative). Stewart's 'aw shucks' demeanor and reliability serve the film well. It is possible to suspend belief and imagine Lombard and Stewart as a real-life married couple, as their portrayals are so well-executed.
Lucile Watson (best known for 'Waterloo Bridge') gives a good supporting performance as John's elderly interfering mother, as does Charles Coburn as Judge Doolittle. The thing that ultimately lets this film down is the pacing of the narrative and the overall plot. It's not an overly long film, but some scenes do seem to drag tremendously. 'Made For Each Other' has a tendency to be too sweet and simplistic in it's resolve, and it's a readily familiar story, nothing new here. Lombard and Stewart breathe life into what would have been just a B-grade vehicle.
A lovely thing about this film is the opportunity to watch Carole playing a mother. Lombard was desperate to have a child with husband Clark Gable, and her warmth and caring manner shine through in the scenes with her child. They are tinged with sadness though, as we Lombard fans are all too aware of the fact that Carole was to die tragically in a plane crash only a few years later, she never got the chance to live out her dream in real-life
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