I was a male war bride
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | I was a male war bride |
| Original title | I Was a Male War Bride |
| Country of production | United States |
| original language | English |
| Publishing year | 1949 |
| length | 105 minutes |
| Rod | |
| Director | Howard Hawks |
| script |
Charles Lederer , Leonard Spigelgass , Hagar Wilde |
| production | Sol C. Siegel |
| music | Cyril Mockridge |
| camera |
Norbert Brodine , Osmond Borradaile |
| cut | James B. Clark |
| occupation | |
| |
I Was a Male War Bride (Original title: I Was a Male War Bride ) is an American screwball comedy directed by Howard Hawks . Hawks was inspired by a newspaper report on Henri Rochard (1921-2018), a Belgian who married an American nurse, to the plot.
action
Henri Rochard is a captain in the French army in occupied post-war Germany . In Heidelberg he meets Lt. Catherine Gates, US Army Corps (WAC). You already know each other. Catherine sees Henri as a womanizer and meets him with a skeptical sympathy. Both are now given the task of finding a German named Schindler of interest to the USA in Bad Nauheim , to whom papers are to be handed over. There is no car available to get there. You take a sidecar motorcycle , with Catherine driving, as only she has the required driver's license. The journey is rather inharmonious, as both of them constantly nag and tease each other.
After a few mistakes and obstacles, dead tired and tense in an inn in Bad Nauheim, Catherine allowed Henri to massage her until she fell asleep. And assumes that he will then go to his room. But since the doorknob fell off, Henri had to spend the night uncomfortably in an armchair and lay down in bed next to her at dawn. She is indignant about this , suspects dishonest intentions and is only appeased when the landlady knocking outside confirms Henri's statement. On the black market in Nauheim, Henri tries to find Schindler in civilian clothes. Meanwhile, Catherine meets a comrade officer who tells her where Schindler can be found.
At breakfast they watch a raid in which Henri is arrested. Now it is up to him to be outraged because Catherine denies knowing him. Soon released from prison after this prank, the tablecloth for the resentful Henri seems cut up. He only falls in love with Catherine on the way back, when the sidecar team has landed in a haystack.
They eventually get married later, which is not easy due to the military bureaucracy. When Catherine's unit is transferred back to the USA, the planned wedding night in Paris collapses (after three marriages before the German registry office, the US army chaplain and a French priest). The couple is picked up from the Paris hotel by Catherine's comrade Kitty and they return to Germany in a hurry by plane. The paperwork is only just beginning now. Foreign spouses are legally allowed to travel to the USA with you. The law obviously means married women , but this is nowhere explicitly stated. The two therefore appeal to the law, and Henri becomes the “male war bride”, which leads to all sorts of confusion and, above all, to Henri's sleepless nights between Heidelberg and Bremerhaven.
After all, only one thing helps: Henri has to become a woman. With a woman's uniform and a makeshift horse hair wig, he boarded the ship to New York with Catherine on the second attempt. When Henri is mistaken for a nurse and is supposed to help with a delivery, the dizziness is discovered, but one is already at sea. He spends the rest of the crossing alone with Catherine in the locked cabin after throwing the key out of the porthole.
background
Hawks allowed his stars Cary Grant and Ann Sheridan to improvise dialogues as he was not satisfied with the script dialogues in some places. It was Grant in particular who spiced up one or the other dialogue between the two main actors.
The film was shown in 1948 at original locations in Heidelberg , Mannheim , Frankfurt am Main , Schwetzingen , Neckargemünd , Kleingemünd , Neckarsteinach , Zuzenhausen , Eschelbronn and on the Neckar in the Neckar Valley , etc. a. filmed at the Rockenau barrage and in the Carl-Schurz-Kaserne in Bremerhaven .
Reviews
“High-spirited, very funny disguise grotesque; an accurate parody of American bureaucratism. "
Web links
- I Was a Male War Bride in theInternet Movie Database(English)
- I Was a Male War Bride atRotten Tomatoes(English)