We've been away from movie watching for a while because we had to binge-watch the two seasons of Icelandic Nordic Noir Trapped that we found on Amazon. Check it out! Season 2 gets a little bit silly (and gratuitously kills off a beloved character, like the first season of The Killing) but both are gripping.
Anyway, it's that Xmas Movie time of year, and this one has been sitting on our shelves for a while, so what the hell. Verdict: pretty entertaining, but if it didn't have Cary Grant playing the angel it would probably be insufferable. Also a bit odd: Cary Grant plays sexy angel "Dudley" (do-right?) who comes to Earth purportedly to help Episcopalian (you can tell he's not Catholic by the very title) Bishop David Niven (did he ever not have that stupid little mustache?) find his way after having lost it by being promoted from the small inner-city parish where he was doing good, to a Bishop obsessed with getting a cathedral built with help from rich donors, but who ends up essentially romancing the titular wife, played by skinny waif Loretta Young.
Niven (whose other Heaven-themed film, A Matter of Life and Death serves him much better) doesn't noticeably improve from the snappy jerk he is at the start, and even gets exasperated towards (and jealous of) his heavenly assistant. Meanwhile Grant charms all he encounters, including Elsa Lanchester (who is transitioning from the Mary Shelley of Bride of Frankenstein to the Katie Nanna of Mary Poppins) as the maid, and even the battleaxe rich dragon whose outrageous design demands for the cathedral Niven is caving to. The only person who initially resists him is Monty Woolley as an old atheist professor who still lives in the seedy neighborhood the Bishop and wife have abandoned, but he warms to Dudley partly because he gives him an inexhaustible sherry bottle and partly because he removes his writer's block (he's been struggling to write a history of Rome for years, but never could think of anything original to say) by telling him personal anecdotes that he (Dudley) remembers from those years. This is a film that's not afraid to have a little bit of a wallow (extended scene of a boy's choir singing a carol, Dudley enthralling the couple's daughter Debby with a story of King David)
and wear its religion on its sleeve (although Woolley is presented as an unapologetic unbeliever, and accepted as such, we see him show up to church for the midnight Xmas Eve sermon at the end), but it has genuinely charming scenes, such as an extended skating sequence
(complete with slapstick from the cabbie that Dudley and Loretta Young drag along).
Grant refrains from his Arsenic and Old Lace slapstick antics (mercifully, no mugging or double-takes) and instead is suaveness personified (albeit with a slightly unearthly air), and this makes the whole shenanigans work, where it could easily have crossed over into malarkey. The ending, where he has to go on to another mission, and wipe all memories of him from the humans he has helped, despite having fallen for Loretta Young, even manages to be poignant. Definitely appropriate watching for the week or so before Dec. 25th.
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