‘The More The Merrier’ or — A Room With a Queue?
Finding a place to stay in Washington D.C. when there’s a war on is almost impossible. Who knows what sort of sneaky tricks a retired millionaire will resort to in order to snag an available room? Not only that but who knows the sneaky tricks a retired millionaire will get up to once he’s snagged that room and starts interfering with his landlady’s love-life. That’s not a lodger, that’s an interfering asshole.
The problem is this interfering asshole is also a good-natured, friendly old man called Mr Dingle whose motto/rationale/excuse/justification for everything is “Damn the torpedoes — full steam ahead!”. This is how Mr Dingle lives his life and he expects other to do so also. Unfortunately his landlady, Connie, has a more structured approached to her life. She likes order and routine. Sure, that might not be terribly spontaneous but she’s not a spontaneous kinda gal, her 22 month long engagement to the reliable Mr Pendergast being testament to that.
Mr Dingle thinks Connie would be much better suited to Air Force Sergeant Joe, a clean-cut kinda guy with a propeller but no place to stay. Mr Dingle is renting half of Connie’s apartment so surely it’s his right to sublet is half of her half? Connie might like her own space but there’s a war on and so many people in the city that the concept of privacy is practically redundant. So Joe moves in with Mr Dingle and Connie although Connie doesn’t know this, even when Joe is using her shower and dancing in her hallway in his dressing gown.
Mr Dingle’s obvious plan is that these two should fall in love because life is short. And even though Connie is understandably furious, incensed and outraged at all this meddling maybe these two souls will end up together if everything is handled with a light, patient and delicate touch by Mr Dingle. Damn the torpedoes — full steam ahead!
‘The More The Merrier’ (1943) is a wonderful, fast-paced, breathless, hilarious, tightly directed and VERY sexy comedy bursting at the seams with gags (“I want to see if anyone I know is getting born today”), pratfalls and screwball energy. It’s as naughty and fun as a pair of trousers flying out a window. For one thing we’re never quite sure if, despite his benign demeanour, Mr Dingle is a force for good or total devastation. Maybe things have to be torn down before they can be built up again but Mr Dingle seems to be following a scorched-earth policy. He’s like Clarence from ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ (1946) but not, necessarily, sent from ‘up there’.
Joel McCrea and Jean Arthur fizzle off each other as the two unsuspecting lovers. Notice McCrea’s hands and how and where they move when they’re sitting on the steps to her/their apartment. This is more lust than love, passion than prudence, as the body language flips into the X-rated (if this was dialogue it would need to be bleeped in this scene).
Being a slick comedy machine does mean ‘The More The Merrier’ does become, somewhat inevitably, a little contrived towards the end with leaps and jumps being made to bring it all together. which are hard to swallow. In that way it’s similar to ‘Seinfeld’ in terms of its structure and also in the repetition of words, phrase and the use of call-backs etc. It’s technically impressive but maybe at the expense of some emotional investment when it can feel as though we’re watching pieces fall together as opposed to two human beings falling in love. But these two are being manipulated like crazy anyway so it’s kinda fitting.
But what of that title — ‘The More The Merrier’? For me it’s illustrated very much in the way George Stevens directs the film as he crams as many people into as many spaces as physically possible. Streets teem with bodies, cars almost pop like balloons on wheels they’re so stuffed with women; restaurants aren’t places to eat but zones of infinite humanity. We are social creatures who need proximity to other human beings so Stevens fills every part of the screen with bodies, warm, living bodies, as though Washington D.C. is so over-crowded people had to start living inside the movie itself. It’s a spillage of humanity and ‘The More The Merrier’ overflows with the joy of it.
‘The More The Merrier’ is absolutely delightful and incredibly funny. It might seem like a film about two lovers coming together but it’s also about the human condition and how life is better with more people in it — the more the merrier indeed so let’s knock some walls down and invite more folk into ours. The film proves Sartre wrong — Hell is not other people. In fact, they might very well be a necessary Heaven.
