Kiss and Make-Up

Dr. Maurice Lamar is a world famous, egotistical, Parisian plastic surgeon. He prides himself on making women slaves to their new beauty. Maintenance, always maintenance. Overt innuendo abounds that his patients, once transformed by his skilled hand, become his conquests. His affairs he refers to as "lovely episodes."

Enamored of his masterpiece, Madame Caron, they soon ditch her husband and marry. We soon see that "Dr. Frankenstein" has married his monster. The moral of the story is that Dr. Lamar discovers that it's no fun to love (Kiss) a woman,when that same woman has become obsessed with her looks, figure and Makeup to the exclusion of all else. Beauty, truly, is in the eye of the beholder.

I prefer to watch the classics of the 30's 40's & 50's over any of the mindless garbage todays writers come up with.

I liked this movie more than I had expected. It is a light comedy that kept me entertained throughout. At one moment we see an American couple going to a traditional Italian restaurant (chequered tablecloths, vines overhead and all) ordering corned beef and cabbage. As if this weren't enough, they break out in song: I love - cooorned beef and cabbage! It's disarmingly silly. Dark haired lead actress Helen Mack is cute and funny, a kind of an early Holly Hunter.

Kiss and Make-Up delivers mainly eye candy. At the center of its story is a beauty parlor in Paris which is also a gym and a clinic with the general aim to improve the physical appearance of the female. Cary Grant is the owner and boss of the outfit and supposed to be a kind of a health guru who helps nature along with creams and ointments etc. which he also markets through radio programs and books (a kind of Dr Lovell?).

A great many beautiful girls and bare legs are on display, and the whole set up of the parlor is just as good and elegant as one designed by famous set designer Cedric Gibbons for the later made, more famous movie The Women. Also very notable is some of the set design during the middle part of the movie which takes place in a Mediterranean holiday resort. It is clearly inspired by the Italian version of Art Deco, with curved walls and furniture, circular windows, slender railings and discreet floor patterns. The hotel suite of the couple played by Grant and Genevieve Tobin features a kind of a gallery on very slender chromium pillars in front of a huge window which leads to a big terrace with a view of a historical Italian town on a sea or a lake shore. It's just great to imagine those smart people sitting in a Hollywood bungalow leafing through the latest issues of Italian architectural magazines like Casabella or Domus.

An underrated picture of veritable wackiness, KISS AND MAKE UP is a forerunner to the classic screwball comedies of the late-thirties and early-forties. The storyline of a progressive plastic surgeon (Cary Grant) who becomes involved with his greatest creation (Genevieve Tobin) has a great FRANKENSTEIN-esquire aura that contains some surprisingly dark overtones for a film comedy of this era – a darkness which is present, but not really explored. The film is benefited greatly by Cary Grant, who gets an early chance to display his grand prowess at farce, which is one of the many qualities that inevitably made him a huge Hollywood star. The rest of the cast is also rounded out acceptably, with Tobin, Helen Mack, and Edward Everett Horton all turning in fine work.

On the downside, the film is extremely episodic, which is not inherently a problem in many cases, but here it prevents the picture from gelling into the knockabout farce it intended to be. Also somewhat detrimental is director Harlan Thompson's approach to the material, which often lacks energy or pizazz; make no mistake, Thompson's work is perfectly acceptable, but I could not help but imagine how truly dynamic the film could have been with Howard Hawks or (later) Peter Bogdanovich in the director's chair. Thompson earns major points for the frantic final chase scene, however, which concludes the film with a thunderous, side-splitting, wig-ripping bang! The movie as a whole is solidly enjoyable, but this terrific end sequence alone raises it's rating by at least a notch or two.

A year before Kiss And Make Up came out from Paramount, Sam Goldwyn produced Roman Scandals for Eddie Cantor in which Cantor sang the song Keep Young And Beautiful. While watching this film, it occurred to me that rather than any of the songs that Leo Robin and Ralph Rainger wrote for this film, Keep Young And Beautiful could have served better as the theme for Kiss And Make Up.

Not only that Eddie Cantor should have played the part that Cary Grant did in this film. A few more sight gags and the kind of humor that Cantor did would have served this film better.

With only a few establishing shots to make us believe this is Paris in the film, Cary Grant plays a noted French plastic surgeon who has become a celebrity of sorts with his success rate in turning out women who rate being called a 10. He guarantees doubling their rating value. One woman, Genevieve Tobin is pleased with his work, but her husband Edward Everett Horton is not. Finally Cary has a secretary in his office played by Helen Mack who sees him as a human being and not a celebrity beauty queen maker.

When MGM's compilation film That's Entertainment was released audiences were treated to a clip from Suzy which came out two years later than Kiss And Make Up and had Cary Grant singing Did I Remember. He sings here some songs that surely have been served better had they been done by Paramount's singing star Bing Crosby. In Suzy Grant did the number for laughs, here someone thought maybe he could be a musical star. Big mistake. In fact Edward Everett Horton and Helen Mack singing an ode to that St. Patrick's Day delicacy Corned Beef And Cabbage was the musical highlight.

Not the best Cary Grant film though the wild taxi chase in the end does liven the film up somewhat.