OVP: Casanova Brown (1944)

Film: Casanova Brown (1944)

Stars: Gary Cooper, Teresa Wright, Frank Morgan, Anita Louise

Director: Sam Wood

Oscar History: 3 nominations (Best Score, Sound, Art Direction)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 1/5 stars

As you might have gathered, I watch a lot of movies, particularly from Classical Hollywood.  As a result of that, while I try to approach every film with an open mind, there are actors that I enjoy more than others from that era.  The studio system ensured that the actors that were coming at you were what you'd expect, something reliable & a familiar trope (very few actors of the era regularly stretched outside their wheelhouse).  But like all rules, there are exceptions, and one of them for me is Gary Cooper.  Cooper is a weird actor, partially because his career was so long that it mandated him having different chapters to it.  At one point an almost ungodly beautiful man, he played hapless, handsome leading men in romances & comedies for a great deal of his early career, before Sergeant York transformed him into the everyman hero, something that would eventually lead to his later work in complicated westerns.  Cooper is an actor I approach every film genuinely curious about because sometimes I love him, sometimes I think he adds nothing to the role.  Casanova Brown, unfortunately, is the latter camp.

(Spoilers Ahead) The plot of Casanova Brown is weirdly convoluted not on-paper, but in execution (more in a second), but I'll summarize a bit before we get into the critique.  Casanova Brown (Cooper), meets with his girlfriend Madge (Louise) after unsuccessfully publishing a book about his ancestor (the actual, legendary Casanova).  He asks Madge to marry him (despite her father JJ Ferris's, played by Frank Morgan, objections to the union weirdly on Casanova's behalf), and she says yes, but before the wedding happens, Casanova gets a letter from a maternity ward, learning that his ex-wife Isabel (Wright) has had a baby.  The two had a whirlwind romance/marriage, which was later annulled when Isabel's eccentric mother objected to the two's astrological compatibility, which accidentally leads to Casanova burning down their house (it's just as strange as it sounds in the movie, I promise you).  Casanova learns that Isabel wants to give the baby up for adoption, but objects to it as he wants to raise his daughter.  Madness ensues, including Casanova kidnapping the baby, but in the end Isabel & he are reunited, making everyone except for Madge happy, and the new family is reunited.

Casanova Brown could be cute, but it's not.  Made in the wake of the success of Pride of the Yankees, it made sense to re-team Wright & Cooper, but while I haven't seen that movie (I'm ashamed of it too-one of the most-nominated films at the Oscars I've never seen), the chemistry between the two leads here is more a fizzle than a tempest.  Wright doesn't have a clue how to play this underwritten part, and Cooper's intellect seems to swing wildly from scene-to-scene, not entirely sure if he's supposed to be taking Casanova all that seriously as a figure.  The result is a dull, meandering piece that never really makes sense.  Morgan is the best part of it, but he's not in it long enough for me to give much credit beyond that role.

The film won three Oscar nominations, and deserved none of them.  The Score is standard-fare stuff from Arthur Lange, not exceptional in any way.  It bounces a bit, and feels much lighter than the picture, sharing the tonal problems that are also rampant in Wright & Cooper's performances.  This was the penultimate year in the "let's nominate everybody" years of the music categories, which might explain its inclusion.  The Art Direction has some fun motifs to play with, including Isabel's parents' house (which is grandiose & has a lovely parlor), but the hospital scenes look like they were torn together from a 1950's sitcom set they're so generic & completely inauthentic.  I don't really get what the Academy was doing here-it feels like a tossaway nomination.  The final nod, though, for Sound, is the most egregious.  There is nothing compelling about the sound work here-nothing stands out, the score is not well-utilized, and we don't even have a gimmick to lean into...there is nothing all that impressive about what Casanova Brown is doing aurally to justify this random inclusion.