I Was a Male War Bride

Howard Hawks proves once again why he is considered to be the director's director. The story is fairly simplistic, but with the help of brilliant actors and ingenious dialogue he turned it into a masterpiece and a classic. And it's a damn funny movie, too.

I expected an explanation how the limey Grant got to join the French army, until the credits rolled and forced me to realise that he was meant to be genuine, native French. The good thing here is that Grant never in the least tries to act French, which is probably a good idea as it would have proved to be annoying in the long run. He merely wears a képi.

The chemistry between Ann Sheridan and Cary Grant is amazing, and Ann is so damn sexy. I particularly enjoyed her role as a strong yet sensuous woman, who, in contrast with many other female roles of the time, comes across as plenty fresh and modern.

The movie is a light-hearted comedy for the first half, and then suddenly turns into an almost Kafkaian nightmare for the rest. Grant really shows us his thespic stuff when he's battling being turned into a woman for bureaucratic reasons.

I'm giving this only nine points because I want to leave me some room for improvement. But it's a brilliant and very enjoyable movie, which is sadly underrated.

Although the film shows hundreds of American female military personnel stationed in Germany after World War II, apparently few were interested in the local men. According to Howard Hawks's "I Was a Male War Bride," only the male soldiers wed Europeans, and the military bureaucracy and red tape were stacked against American women marrying European men. With that premise, an American Lieutenant, Ann Sheridan, falls for Frenchman Cary Grant, and the couple resort to extraordinary ploys to both comply with and circumvent the rules to marry and bring Grant to the U.S. as Sheridan's "bride." Although Grant is about as French as Big Ben and looks as feminine in drag as Sylvester Stallone, Cary is Cary and brings charm and charisma to his improbable role of Captain Henri Rochard. Tough and sexy Sheridan is better cast, but the sum of the two stars exceeds either apart. Cary and Ann have chemistry and work well together in a plot that could have easily fallen apart with a less skilled team of actors and director.

Grant plays the patient and suffering spouse, who must endlessly explain that he is married to an American soldier and entitled to shelter and transportation in a system that does not recognize his gender as compatible with his situation. Throughout, Grant's face and body language speak volumes about the frustration of dealing with bureaucracy and filling in forms in triplicate. Although at times Sheridan seems oblivious to the depth of Grant's problems, her performance is fine, and she convincingly captures the transition from an initial loathing of to an eventual attraction to Rochard. Shot on location in post-war Germany, the black-and-white photography captures the beauty of the countryside and the devastation of the cities with documentary like precision. Hawks keeps the proceedings well paced, and, while rarely laugh-out-loud funny, "I Was a Male War Bride" and its megawatt stars provide excellent entertainment.

I've always liked this movie despite it having one VERY serious short-coming. You see, some dimwit decided to cast Cary Grant as a French Soldier and, to put it bluntly, he sucks at imitating a Frenchman. If only the producers had watched the movie Suzy (completed more than a decade earlier), they could have seen how silly Grant looks when he plays a French person. He has no trace of a French accent. If he had sounded like Pepe LePew, it would have been a vast improvement! So, provided you can get past this (and I'm sure many CAN'T), you are left with an intelligent little comedy about what happens when an American servicewoman marries a French officer and tries to bring him back to the states. As you may have guessed, this did NOT happen very often as nearly all American troops who married abroad were men marrying local ladies. And, because this is NOT the norm, one bureaucratic snafu after another prevent them from the supposedly easy task of immigrating with his new bride to America. Particularly noteworthy is Grant when he poses as a WAC! Although he was a handsome man, he was one scary looking woman!!

Howard Hawks has fashioned many a film on his favorite subject of the war between men and women. But none has been more droll, in my estimation, than "I Was Male War Bride". The movie was filmed in actual French locations not long after the end of WWII. The plot revolves about the necessity for two officers, a Frenchman and an American WAC, to go on a mission together--after a disastrous first assignment, at least on a personal level. The adventures, mishaps, one-upsmanships, accidents and lodging-room mixups they have results in further infuriating the French officer, at the same time he is falling in love with his maddening partner. But the real problem for them begins when they decide to get married and go to the United States--and the only way it can be handled swiftly is if he is declared to be a "war bride". The Frenchman is admirably played despite his accent by Cary Grant; the female is the lovely Ann Sheridan, who proves herself to be adept at verbal comedy of the deadpan variety. Other seen to advantage in the film include Randy Stuart, Kenneth Tobey as a grumpy officer, and Marion Marshall. Editor James B. Clark and hairstylist Ben Nye were kept busy during this one; and Lyl;e Wheeler provided luminous images to accompany Cyril Mockridge's clever music. Henri Rochard's story is so real and so involving that the writers who worked on it were able to milk this slender premise for all it was worth. The climax as Grant manages to get to sail home to the US on a ship disguised as a female only adds to the overall sense of intelligence in charge and fun in the air. Not a great film, perhaps, but an important lesson in how to ground satirical comedy in reality, and reap the benefits of a situation .

In doing this film Howard Hawks was greatly influenced by his own Bringing Up Baby. Certainly Cary Grant had never been that henpecked on the screen since that classic film. And Ann Sheridan's WAC character was certainly based on Katharine Hepburn's in Bringing Up Baby. I wouldn't be surprised if this film wasn't originally offered to Hepburn.

I Was a Male War Bride divides neatly in two parts. In fact I'm convinced that a great deal was eliminated from the beginning because the film seems to start in the middle of the story. When it begins Sheridan, a member of the U.S. Women's Army Corps and Grant a French Army officer already know each other and well. Sheridan pushes Grant around the same way Hepburn did in Bringing Up Baby. After a whole lot of verbal banter with Sheridan taking the lead in it, they decide they're in love and want to be married.

But we're dealing with the army and there is a law about American soldiers taking foreign brides while on occupation duty. But no one had the foresight to realize that WACS may find husbands as well. The second half of the film are the frustrations in dealing with all the red tape.

It may seem ridiculous, but we're not only dealing with bureaucratic minds, but military bureaucratic minds. That mindset operates in every army on the planet. What's obvious to us, these folks can't or won't grasp.

Sheridan and Grant team well together. There are no other good secondary characters developed, most of the time it's Grant and Sheridan on the screen together. Sheridan does admirably as a Katharine Hepburn substitute.

You see I Was A Male War Bride and you can understand the military's opposition to gays in their ranks. They don't take to change easily and in fact do it worse than most segments of society.