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Escape artist The Great Arturo captures the heart of bride-to-be Anita and makes her his assistant in an act that tours the world. It soon becomes apparent to Anita that Arturo has no intention of keeping his promises and so she disappears for good to marry Benton. Arturo returns to try and win her back through hypnosis.
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3 of 9 people found the following review helpful
Format:DVD
This is not the movie I would have liked to watch since the story of the movie is tame and anticlimactic; then again I am a big fan of Loretta Young, who plays beautiful Anita Halstead an engaged woman to be married. She breaks her engagement to marry a magician named Arturo (David Niven) with whom she develops instant love. The happiness does not last long since her role as a wife and stage assistant is a little too much to handle when she finds out that she has to go on a world tour, and watch her husband's dare-devil stunts and his flirtations with other women. It doesn't take too long for her to divorce him and remarry again, but the magician doesn't give up sitting down. He goes after her, to win her back in spite of the fact she is remarried. Finally Anita realizes that she still loves him, then divorces her second husband and marries Arturo again. The movie is categorized as a comedy, but it is not; it is also fast paced in the sense that Anita marries almost instantly to Arturo after breaking her engagement, and then divorces him before you know what is happening, and then remarries again. This story is set in year 1939, a conservative era for an unorthodox movie. I certainly don't think the studio needed a fine actress like Loretta Young for this role.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
6 reviews
30 of 31 people found the following review helpful
Pleasant movie,poor print.
27 May 2000
Amazon Verified Purchase
The movie itself is by no means a classic - similar comic confections were served up far more enticingly by the likes of Garson Kanin,Wesley Ruggles and Ernst Lubitsch - but Niven and Young are effective enough,and the idea at the heart of the movie is strong enough to survive the mediocre script.The print,however,is dreadful -it is like watching the movie through the bottom of a glass- and,as the video is recorded in EP mode (why?),your VCR may well struggle with its tracking for the 110 minutes of the entertainment.Why this is labelled as a "Collector's Edition" is a mystery:avoid this edition,go for the other one and watch a slight but amiable comedy.
5 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Vintage
30 Sep 2005
Format:DVD|Amazon Verified Purchase
Lighthearted, predictable, but entirely enjoyabe. Zazu Pitts is the glue that holds a good deal of the premise together. This is a film that epitomizes the productions of it's time.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Look Into My Eyes, While I Mesmerize. . .
4 Jun 2010
This review is for the movie and not the format--there was not a place to review on the DVD page. Viewers have complained about the quality of the VHS, but aside from that the whole flim was shot in what I call "soft glow" a vaseline on the lens type effect and it does add a mysterious dream-like quality that is at times beautiful.
David Niven plays an ACE magician that enchants audiences. His Houdini-like stunts seem impossible. Loretta Young's character is his capable assistant and they have much on-stage chemistry for the audience to behold. They are very complementary to each other's needs so they get married--today, I suppose we would call that co-dependency. They have a circle of friends that include such fine character actors as Broderick Crawford, Eve Arden and Zasu Pitts filling the scenes with gay banter. Niven trys to push the limit on each new stunt, the most outlandish being his trick of jumping out of an airplane while his hands are too confined by a straightjacket and handcuffs to pull the rip cord on his chute until the very last moment. Each time he makes it back safely, nail-biting, hand-wringing Loretta makes him promise it will be the last time he does the stunt. He is addicted to pushing the limit and can't stop. Finally she walks out on him, unwilling to go through the torture any longer, and marries Broderick Crawford on the rebound. He is safe and boring. Niven almost dies when his chute, with him attached, lands in a lake. He is pulled out right before he drowns. He has tried to get Loretta back even to the point of getting into fisticuffs with Crawford, and she runs to his side as he is injured on the dock. She leaves Crawford when Niven realizes that his scrape with death was what he needed to finally make him want to settle down in a picturesque country home with Loretta and give up magic for good. What is great about this movie is valiant attempts at magical special effects for the time in which it was made: hypnotic trances, double vision, aerial photography from the plane, mysterious tricks of the eye (camera). At times cheesey, at times not--always entertaining to the viewer. They also did a good job training the magician's bunnies to fall in love with each other at the end of the movie.
David Niven plays an ACE magician that enchants audiences. His Houdini-like stunts seem impossible. Loretta Young's character is his capable assistant and they have much on-stage chemistry for the audience to behold. They are very complementary to each other's needs so they get married--today, I suppose we would call that co-dependency. They have a circle of friends that include such fine character actors as Broderick Crawford, Eve Arden and Zasu Pitts filling the scenes with gay banter. Niven trys to push the limit on each new stunt, the most outlandish being his trick of jumping out of an airplane while his hands are too confined by a straightjacket and handcuffs to pull the rip cord on his chute until the very last moment. Each time he makes it back safely, nail-biting, hand-wringing Loretta makes him promise it will be the last time he does the stunt. He is addicted to pushing the limit and can't stop. Finally she walks out on him, unwilling to go through the torture any longer, and marries Broderick Crawford on the rebound. He is safe and boring. Niven almost dies when his chute, with him attached, lands in a lake. He is pulled out right before he drowns. He has tried to get Loretta back even to the point of getting into fisticuffs with Crawford, and she runs to his side as he is injured on the dock. She leaves Crawford when Niven realizes that his scrape with death was what he needed to finally make him want to settle down in a picturesque country home with Loretta and give up magic for good. What is great about this movie is valiant attempts at magical special effects for the time in which it was made: hypnotic trances, double vision, aerial photography from the plane, mysterious tricks of the eye (camera). At times cheesey, at times not--always entertaining to the viewer. They also did a good job training the magician's bunnies to fall in love with each other at the end of the movie.
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