‘I Was a Male War Bride’ or — Unhurried Hawks?
Howard Hawks’ ‘I Was a Male War Bride’ (1949) is a film that grapples with issues of identity in more ways than one as, for the first hour or so, I was wondering what sort of movie this was. Is it a war film? A road movie? An espionage thriller? A romantic comedy (well, yes. That’s obviously beyond doubt)? But, like Cary Grant’s French Army Captain in a dress, it took me a little while to figure out what it was I was looking at. But when I did I was delighted.
The story is pretty simple — Grant’s Captain Henri Rochard has been ordered to contact a skilled lens maker by the name of Schindler. This is post-war Allied Occupied Germany so Captain Rochard is assigned American Lieutenant Catherine Gates (Ann Sheridan) as his driver. The only problem is both Rochard and Gates seem to have a history so neither is particularly keen to work with the other. Still, orders are orders and once the Army bureaucratic machine is in motion then nothing can stop it (Hmm, this knowledge might come in handy one day).
And so Gates and Rochard set off to find Schindler as, on the way, they bicker and tease each other so much that we know they’ll be fucking like crazy by the end of the movie. Yet before that can happen we also know there’ll be obstacles in their way because the best part of sex is the exhilarating frustration of getting it in the first place. Then there’s also the possibility Gates and Rochard will kill each other first, especially as they both seem to both be highly sexed creatures and all this pent up arousal can only be bottled up for so long. Oh, the burden we carry for being sexual animals.
What’s initially striking about ‘I Was a Male War Bride’ is the amount of location shooting, of which there is a lot. Huge chunks of the movie are shot in post-war Germany so there’s a real sense of time and place about what we’re seeing. And what we’re seeing is very funny indeed.
It takes a little while to get going as we ride along with Gates and Rochard and gradually piece together their previous history by decoding their innuendos. It seems Rochard is a bit of a cad and a whole of an idiot and, for a while, he seems simply swept along by events and, frequently, being borderline useless. There’s a wonderful scene where Grant is forced, by unforeseen circumstances, to spend the night sleeping in a chair and it was hilarious watching him trying to figure out what to do with his hands (Grant looks at them as though they’re alien creatures).
Grant’s dopiness gives the movie a somewhat laid back attitude as we watch him being carted from one mishap to the next, so the film is a little less frantic than some of Hawks’ other comedies, although it’s still pacy as hell. But, again, I was wondering where it was all going and when would being a war bride factor into it?
It’s not until just over the halfway mark that we discover the reason for the movie’s title and when we do it’s extremely funny and, suddenly, the entire film has flipped into something else and in possession of an entirely different motivating drive. Gates and Rochard want to be married and live together but Army regulations get in the way. Fortunately Army regulations also provide a solution but it’s one that requires Grant’s Rochard to adopt an unusual role that will test his sense of gender identity and man-hood. It’s a fantastic set-up for some brilliant comedy revolving around gender stereotypes and threatened masculinity.
There’s a sublime scene where Grant is sitting “breastfeeding” a baby whilst providing some perfectly executed responses to the news of all the latest female fashions of the season he’s hearing. It’s a beautiful piece of acting, writing and directing. Likewise, I laughed hard every single time Grant said to someone, with increasing exasperation, “I’m an alien spouse”. What a wonderful sentence and it must’ve been so much fun to speak it out loud!
By the end of the movie Grant’s Rochard is, literally, a horse-ass but he’s provided us with so much entertainment along the way that we’re more than happy to see him have a deserved rest, even if sleep is the last thing on either his or Gates’ mind… if it’s their minds that’s doing the thinking that is.
It took me a little while to settle into ‘I Was a Male War Bride’ but I think that’s because it doesn’t really reveal itself, unveil its true nature and identity, until its worked its way under your skin a little first. By the time it does you’re hooked and, like Rochard and Gates, you’re then more than happy, if not desperate, to go all the way.
