Le diable s'en mêle

All aspiring and established actresses who aspire to light comedy and romantic comedy, should pay to see Jean Arthur. Simply the greatest.. She set a standard that may not be attained. She was that good. I never saw her give anything but an excellent performance And I think i have seen just about everything she did

The most inventive comedy ever done, the romantic couple Jean Arthur & Bob Cummings is easily overcame by the "Devil" Charles Coburn, after he hung in front of own store the angry millionaire infiltrate as employee in an attempt to discover who are involved in such worker movements to best conditions to work, there he faces many small troubles with his cold manager played by Edmund Gwen, including a priceless scene when they measure his intelligence quotient is under 66, his love relationship with old lady Spring Byington and a friendship with Jean Arthur and later with Cummings a real troublemaker, a wise comedy with social criticism which doesn't do justice to Charles Corbun who deserves had won as best supporting role by Academy Awards which was nominee, a robust picture that comes to the light to my young generation, a true hidden gem!! Resume: First watch: 2019 / How many: 1 / Source: DVD / Rating: 9

1. Closest thing to "perfect" from the screwball comedy era. Casting, acting, script, direction -- flawless and delightful. 2. Hey, where are the Hollywood script thieves when you need one? There should have been a half-dozen remakes by now, the theme is timeless. Could it be that the infamous triple-X film of a similar name permanently banished this gem into cinematic deep storage??? 3. Heavy sigh. I miss the days when an actress had a voice so distinctive that you could build an entire movie around it. (Jean Arthur). And the description of True Love in the Coney Island sequence is to die for. 4. Also miss the days when the wealthy 1% Elite were cute and cuddly with a marshmallow centre -- and weren't always trying to get rid of the rest of us with GMOs, vaccines and chemtrails.

This is a wonderful story from the days immediately preceding America's entry into WWII, when the values that made America great were on display in the movies. A powerful department store owner, played by Charles Coburn, gets a job as a lowly clerk in his own store, in order to ferret out the workers who are trying to organize a labor union. He gradually gets caught up in the lives of the clerks in the shoe department (co-stars Jean Arthur, Bob Cummings, Spring Byington, Edmund Gwen) who accept him as just a poor, older man, and his view of things begins to shift. There are some excellent scenes in this movie, especially one in which Coburn is arrested while on a day at the beach with his fellow workers, and has to be kept out of jail by Cummings' bravado. Of course, everything works out well in the end, because this movie was made in the days when good was destined to triumph over evil.

I saw this movie for the first time on TCM, during their run-up to the 2005 Oscars. I expected quaint, cute, pleasant. What I got was much more: strong writing and characters, believable performances, a sure hand of the director who knew how to make comedy work on-screen, an interesting story with plot twists. Even after more than six decades, this comedy still works well. Today's comedy directors and writers could learn a lot from this film: how to make the situations and characters work without shoving in the audience's face. Sam Wood gives the audience for this film some credit for intelligence, and lets the strength of the script and actors emerge. For the first time, I realized just what fine actors are Charles Coburn and Jean Arthur.

Charles Coburn was a funny man. I wish had more movies with him in them, as he usually makes me laugh. He did here, and this movie was on it's way to a rating of "10" when it bogged down midway through and never really regained momentum. It did have a nice sentimental ending, though. Coburn, meanwhile, was outstanding as the super-rich owner of a department store who goes "underground" as a shoe salesman in his store to find out the cause of worker unrest. Then romance takes over the story: Coburn and Spring Byington and then Bob Cummings and Jean Arthur and the story loses a lot of it comedy touch and its zip. Overall, the film still exudes charm and Coburn, despite third billing, IS the star of this film. I'm sure a number of fans of this film are disappointed it still isn't out on DVD.