It's really "It Happened One Night" -- spoiled girl, on the way to wed her rich fiance, is escorted by a younger man and falls in love with him -- but it's so much more. Powell's and Pressburger's imaginations are boundless. They create characters who are lovable eccentrics, but believable. They shift tone effortlessly from comedy to thriller to travelogue to romance and back again. They employ every resource of cinema, without being showy about it: watch the camera tricks in the first ten minutes alone. They fill the movie with diversions that have little to do with the plot but create a beautifully picaresque atmosphere.
I don't know of any other movie that is so inconsequential on the face of it, yet packs such an enormous emotional wallop. Ostensibly an assembly-line romantic comedy, it's really about spiritual growth, opening yourself to all sorts of new experiences and learning to see things from others' points of view. It's whimsical, but not thin. With its moody photography, wonderful musical score, and numerous coups de cinema, it lingers in your memory months after you've seen it. And the ending is one of the most satisfying in all the movies.
One minor complaint: Hiller is a tad too steely in the beginning, too crisp, too calculating-actress-playing-calculating-character. As she succumbs to the charms of her surroundings and her leading man, though, she's bewitching. And Livesey has one of the most beautiful speaking voices you'll ever hear. Their chemistry is terrific. And when he recites a Celtic poem ending in, "you're the one for me," and looks right at her, it's quite sexy.
There's no other movie quite like it. And I defy anyone to see it on a date and not fall in love with his/her vis-a-vis.
