Made for Each Other

This is really three stories in one about the same couple - and none of them would be really worth seeing if not enacted by Stewart and Lombard.

The first part is by far the best. It is a light-hearted comedy, in the screwball style, about a generally not self-assured young lawyer who for once has taken an impulsive decision, marrying a girl on a chance meeting as a result of love at first sight, putting himself at odds with the two persons he is in awe of and mostly dominated by - his deaf Scrooge of a boss, and his possessive mother. This is quite funny, especially the scene of breaking the news to the mother/mother-in-law.

Then things become fairly humdrum and boring with the second part. The lawyer does not get the promotion he deserved and expected, the young couple has a baby, and they start facing money problems. Baby scenes are a string of moderately amusing cliches, which are absolutely useless to the story. Money problems are trivial, and it takes James Stewart awkwardness to provide some fun when he tries to get a raise from his literally but potentially intentionally deaf boss - Charles Coburn not in one of his most memorable compositions. All of this part of the film spills the beans about what its problem really is - basically it has very little to tell, therefore it fills the void with everything which passes at hand.

And everything in the third part becomes an old plot trick of screenwriters with a shortage of inspiration - a severe, potentially fatal illness of one of the characters, in that case the baby in order to create drama where really there should have been none. Brutally the film turns to crude melodrama and the artificial suspense, extensively dilated, of a serum to be brought by an heroic pilot. Well, well - not telling whether the baby is saved, the film is most certainly not.

Carole Lombard and James Stewart are the only good reason, if any, to watch this mishmash. Stewart is mostly his usual funny and touching self, playing a well-meaning but not always well-inspired character who tries, through necessity, to become the hard-edged breadwinner whom he is not naturally. Lombard's role on the contrary evolves farther and farther away from her usual parts while the film shifts from one storyline to the other. Fresh-faced and fresh-tongued as the bride from nowhere, she adjusts less well, like her character, to the boring life of a housewife with domestic problems - hard to blame her not to put her heart fully in it when viewers are quite bored themselves. Then and finally, melodrama - not an usual or natural genre for her, but she more than deftly adjusts. Moreover, some shots of her face in grief and anxiety, unusually strained but as beautiful as always if not more, "Garbo shots", deepen our regrets of her tragically shortened life and career. Sooner or later it would probably have been discovered that beyond her innate talent for comedy, she could play with equal ease and natural much more dramatic roles. Alas, occasions including this botched one have been very limited.

Jimmy Stewart and Carole Lombard make an incredibly appealing couple, one whose everyday middle-class joys and sorrows you like sharing. That's all there is to the movie, pretty much, Jimmy and Carole get married, have a baby, deal with in-laws, money troubles, changes in their relationship, all the things everyone does. It's the opposite of an Action Flick, here domestic sorrows like pay cuts and not having a baby sitter on New Year's Eve are treated as seriously as real people treat them, and the movie is well made enough that you care. Who couldn't care about such nice, funny, sensitive people? For much of its length, it's a better "Penny Serenade".

The place where it falls apart is the ending, which is a ludicrously inappropriate melodrama about flying medicine in from thousands of miles away in a storm, it just doesn't belong in the same movie. But, I like the story behind it: Like a character in the movie, producer David Selznick's brother Myron (a power agent) was taken seriously ill, and was basically given up for dead. A doctor said that the only thing that could save him was a rare/experimental drug that wasn't available in LA, it had to be flown in from the east coast in terrible weather. The Selznick family sweated for hours, trying to keep in touch with a heroic pilot who was risking his life to save a stranger. When the pilot landed safely and Myron was saved, David Selznick the workaholic producer said "This it too good to waste on Myron. Let's put it in a picture!" I just wish he'd waited for a better place to use it.

Made for Each Other (1939)

"Last year there were half a million divorces in this country. Congratulations."

And that is the beginning of a sometimes-screwball comedy that turns very serious by the end, with James Stewart leading the charge. It could be screwier, and Jimmy Stewart is more lovable than hilarious, so the humor revolves around him as the foil. Carole Lombard, his partner in crime, can be more zany, for sure, but even there, she is more restrained than other films (like "Twentieth Century"). It's the situation, and the rest of the cast, who make this funny...and eventually tragic.

How exactly it drags at times is hard to say. Oddly, even Stewart is a little off base, exaggerating too much. The plot, overall, lacks drive. You might think this doesn't matter in a silly comedy, but it does very much. In fact, because this comedy is laced with a fair amount of normal drama, it needs a basic conflict that dramas need. There are some terrific scenes--the New Year's moment is really moving, and the scenes after that--and these are the reason to watch.

On some level, this is a type of drama/comedy that is aimed at new parents, or newlyweds. The couple's focus on the baby reminded me of "Christmas in Connecticut," and "Penny Serenade." I wish it just worked better, but too often it bumbles along, one little moment after another, the result of imperfect direction (John Cromwell) and a weak script. So it does the best it can, and the last half hour is its best, with high drama kicking in. This is a David O. Selznick production in the same year as his slightly more famous movie, "Gone with the Wind."

As a whole, this movie doesn't work at all. Different parts of the story jump around here and there and fail to form a cohesive piece -- the result of a poorly written script. For instance, halfway into the movie and you still get no idea of where it is all going. You get a vague sense that Johnny's (Jimmy Stewart) inability to support his family and the consequent strain on his relationship with his wife is part of the main plot, only to be completely thrown off by a new development in the story, which doesn't fit into the first portion of the film at all. It's almost like watching two different stories at the same time.

Despite this serious flaw, the film is "saved," so to speak, by its superb cast. Both Charles Coburn and Lucille Watson give their typical character portrayals. Jimmy Stewart gives his usual touching performance that is so well-known to film-goers. Meanwhile, Carole Lombard tries a hand at a dramatic role -- and succeeds. As a wife, she is charmingly believable, and as a mother, simply shines. Thus the unfortunate film is held together -- albeit weakly -- by the performance of the cast. Otherwise there isn't much that would convince one to keep watching. However, it may be worth your time if your main object is to enjoy the performance of either Jimmy Stewart or Carole Lombard, or both.

I am a huge fan of both Jimmy Stewart and Carole Lombard. However, attempting to get through a viewing of "Made for Each Other" made me cringe. The dialogue was superficial, the characters lifeless, and the situations drab and depressing. It seemed that the movie was going for a realistic portrayal of a couple in their first years of matrimony, but it failed miserably in this attempt. Although Stewart and Lombard are both talented actors, at no point during the picture did I ever really *CARE* about what happened to John and Jane Mason. Not only was the script flat and uninventive, but it never really showed what would make the couple fall in love in the first place. Furthermore, the "dramatic" turn of events toward the end of the movie were so cliched, they would easily lend themselves toward derisive laughter rather than tears. Frankly, this wouldn't even make a good "movie of the week."