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Once Upon a Honeymoon (1942)

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From Time Out Film Guide

The year is 1938, the setting a beleaguered Europe in which Cary Grant plays roving radio reporter to Ginger Rogers' Bronx-born gold-digger (with Viennese baron Slezak for a husband). A nonsense plot and bizarre soundtrack (continuous waltzes) can't disguise the fact that this is really three movies in one (love story, spy drama, anti-Nazi polemic), but the whole thing is saved by its irreverence, mixing the romance (and newsreel footage) with moments of outrageously tasteless kitsch: Rogers' Nazi husband cutting up a cake-map of Czechoslovakia, clocks with swastika hands. Splendid, eccentric tragi-comedy. And the erotic undertow of the Grant-Rogers partnership is just incredible.

Author: CA

Time Out Film Guide

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David Fowler said...

Posted on Dec 17 2007 16:43 FINALLY!...A review I can heartily agree with from Time Out! An excellent assessment of Leo McCarey's criminally underrated film. This is virtually the only really positive review of "Once Upon A Honeymoon" that I've been able to find. Most all the others seem shocked and horrified to find a comedy featuring Nazis?!?!......Huh??? These same reviewers (rightly) give high marks to Lubitsch's "To Be Or Not To Be" and Wilder's "Stalag 17". Maybe they thought those were different Nazis........uh huh. I have, on occasion, been moved to vent my spleen at a Time Out review, but I must give credit where it's due. This is the only site with discernment enough to recognize how good a film this is.

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