Screwball comedy as a genre started in New York´s journalist circle in the early 30´s, thanks to writers Charlie McArthur and Ben Hecht, who created the smash stage hit "The Front Page". The trick? Overlapping dialogue, battles of the sexes, war between classes (usually workers vs. bosses) and -last but not least- a wicked sense of humor. By the mid-40´s Screwball was a film milestone, with directors creating successful variations of the same "guy-against-girl-against-world" outline. Billy Wilder, Howard Hawks, George Cukor, Mitchell Leisen, Garson Kanin, Charles Lederer, the Ephrons, Preston Sturges and the master of them all, Ernst Lusbich, directed and wrote thousand of amazing screwballs. In Argentina one guy, a forgotten man, carried the torch. His name was Carlos Schliepper and he directed some of the funniest movies ever made outside the USA. The renegade son of a wealthy family, Schliepper loved american films and had a deep understanding of the Screwball dinamics. In 1950 he was in top form, and his third movie that year, "Cuando Besa Mi Marido" ("When my Husband Kisses"), turns to be a hidden gem. The film develops itself from a very simple premise: a shy guy is believed to be a lust devil. Of course, reality is very different than perception, truth than fiction and, at the end, this shy guy (Angel Magaña) becomes a ladies man while his unfaithful friend (Juan Carlos Thorry) starts a new -and kind of square- marital life. Witty, self referential and full of sexual innuendo, "Cuando Besa Mi Marido" should be regarded as a minor masterpiece of Argentina´s own screwball film school. The movie climax seems to be lifted from Frank Capra´s "It Happened One Night", but Schliepper chose to analize class relations between the uprising peronist middle class and it´s servants. Sometimes broad, sometimes subtle as hell, nobody escaped his sharp and ironic eye. Simply irresistible.
