Movie Reviews by Edwin Jahiel

BISHOP'S WIFE (1947)

An angel who looks, sounds and behaves like Cary Grant (and is played by him) is sent down to earth to help Bishop David Niven and his wife Loretta Young. Niven is obsessed with building a cathedral, millionaire widow Gladys Cooper might fund it but is unpleasant and demanding, sweet Young has to put up with her husband's neglect. Grant's identity (if you can say that about being an angel) is known only to Niven, whose assistant he becomes. Grant and Young have a (pardon the expression) hell of a lot of fun together before the angel makes everybody happy. Sweet movie, too sweet perhaps, but there are times when we crave sugar. What's tricky and ambiguous in this story is that Young is, in effect, unconsciously (?) seduced (in the soft sense) by Grant. It is as though the movie heeded the advice of a producer in the Preston Sturges 1941 masterpiece "Sullivan's Travels". When director Sullivan ( Joel McCrea) decides to quit fluff movies and make a socially relevant film, each time he argues his point the producer keeps adding "..but with a little sex." Obviously, spiritual messages are not free of sex either, though here it is entirely in the sub-subtext. The film is in part remarkable for a hideous hat that is supposed to be beautiful and for Grant ever so subtly "conducting" a boys' choir. Trivia collectors will remember that Grant conducted a school orchestra in "People With Talk." (Edwin Jahiel)