Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Picture 1931-1932

The Contenders:

Arrowsmith
Bad Girl
The Champ
Five Star Final
Grand Hotel (winner)
One Hour with You
Shanghai Express
The Smiling Lieutenant

Two Hours would Overstay the Welcome

Film: One Hour with You
Format: DVD from NetFlix on laptop.

Films like One Hour with You are infuriating to me. On the one hand, it’s a difficult film to dislike. It’s charming and comes complete with the delicate and mildly naughty touch of the great Ernst Lubitsch with some uncredited assistance from the great George Cukor. On the other hand, the people in this film need to all be stood in a long line and slapped repeatedly. I have trouble with fluff pieces like this one because while there’s nothing specifically unpleasant about them, there’s also a constant low-grade irritation for me.

Since One Hour with You is a musical romantic comedy, we can guess from the start that we’ll be getting a happy ending by the time this short little nothing winds up. More than that, we can guess within the first couple of minutes that our main couple is going to experience a series of misunderstandings that would be easily resolved with a couple of words. Really, it’s more or less the chance to look at a couple of pretty people and hear a couple of peppy songs. That’s it. And, since it’s Maurice Chevalier, which means a lot of fourth wall breaks where he speaks directly to the audience.