Saturday 29 July 2023

The Major and the Minor (1943 Billy Wilder & co-scr)

There's something very risqué about this film, in which Ginger Rogers plays a twelve year old, particularly in early, delicious scenes on train with Ray Milland. I love that when she meets Diana Lynn the latter immediately bursts her bubble by saying 'You're not twelve - and why are you talking like you're six?' 

Then, when she's playing her mother (who is in fact her real mother Lela Rogers), it's head-spinningly trippy. (She then - at the movie's finale - plays herself for the one and only time.)

It's a wonderful debut. Ginger agreed to it after winning her Oscar for Kitty Foyle and then had a nickname for Wilder 'MFD' ('My Favorite Director').


Shot by Leo Tover, edited by Doane Harrison.

With Rita Johnson, Robert Benchley.

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