Wolff rating: NOT BAD
Plot summary: Innocent man who escaped from prison hides out in a law professor's house.
Biased, pithy comments: This was a hard movie to rate in many ways. It alternated between comedy and seriousness, moving from caper to slapstick to moralizing in a way that is pretty much unsettling---I couldn't tell if I was supposed to be building up a head of laughter or ponder the meaning of law and order. Also, the characters were such simple creations that they could have only existed in a movie made before 1950; I am used to shades of grey in my characters in movies where I'm actually asked to think about what the movie means. The admonition about returning justice in a world of muckraking, demagoguery, privilege, and power rings true still today, however. Older viewers than I recognized better the mesh of styles and characters that made this a genre-bender at the time it was produced.
Other Notes: Nominated for several Oscars, won none of them.
How many times I have seen it: x1
Starring: Cary Grant, Jean Arthur, Ronald Colman.
Directed by: George Stevens