Programme notes CH 04 — The Matinee
The Big Pond
A Venetian guide follows an American heiress home and is put to work in her father's chewing-gum factory to cure him of her.
Paramount shot this at Astoria in English and, on the same sets, in French, and Chevalier and Colbert played both. The plan belongs to the girl's father (George Barbier): give the charming foreigner a job at the gum works and let honest labour show him up. It backfires, of course, and the joke is the American dream played straight by a Frenchman. Preston Sturges wrote the dialogue, nine years before he directed anything; listen for the speed of the office scenes. And when Chevalier sings “You Brought a New Kind of Love to Me”, watch him play it as an argument he means to win.
Credits — follow anyone
- Directed by
- Hobart Henley
- Photographed by
- George J. Folsey
Every name is a door — each opens onto everything else that person made in the network.
The thread · every thread
Chevalier a year apart as a European charmer who marries above himself, and then has to prove he is more than decoration. Lubitsch makes him a queen's consort with nothing to do; Sturges sends him to the factory floor.