by Anony Mili

Created on: November 30, 2010   Last Updated: December 01, 2010

Not to be confused with the Pitt/Jolie film of 2005, being a huge Hitchcock fan I thought I’d pick up a copy of Mr & Mrs Smith and see how Hitchcock fared with a comedy.

David and Ann Smith are supposedly happily married and have a policy of not leaving the bedroom if they have an argument until it’s resolved, sometimes taking days on end. Ann asks her husband over breakfast one morning if he could do it all again, would he still marry her. She is very hurt when he says he wouldn’t, that he loves her dearly but he would have probably stayed single. The very same day, the registrar who carried out their marriage 3 years previously turns up at David’s office and says due to a technicality, they’re not actually legally married, but not to worry, they can get married again quite easily. Unaware that the registrar also visited Ann and told her; David doesn’t tell Ann of this technicality straight away causing Ann to kick him out. Matters get complicated when David’s partner and supposed best friend, Jess, starts dating Ann and considering marriage whilst David starts to get more and more frustrated over Ann’s behaviour and refusal to marry him again. Does Ann end up marrying Jeff? Or David?

ANALYSIS

Mr & Mrs Smith was released in 1941 having been directed by Alfred Hitchcock and produced by Harry Edington with a story by Norman Krasna. With Robert Montgomery in the leading role of David and Carole Lombard as Anne, I was expecting something quite different. Being a Hitchcock film that I hadn’t heard anything about aside from knowing it was a black and white comedy, I was sure I was going to enjoy the film. How wrong I was!

From the opening scenes I took an instant dislike to Carole Lombard’s character. I found her to be far too simpering for my liking and her insistence that her husband not go to work until they resolved all issues made me want to slap her. She didn’t do anything for a living yet she was happy to risk her husband’s career over her “rules” that they can’t leave the bedroom until they resolved any arguments, then her insistence that her husband answer any questions she posed to him about his feelings with honesty and then being upset at his honesty. I didn’t find any redeeming qualities about her character throughout the whole film and honestly I also found David’s character to be quite annoying too. He claimed that he would have stayed single

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