THE MEANEST MAN IN THE WORLD: file this one under 'What Was He Thinking?'

Jack Benny's penultimate film offers slim pickings for fans of his peerless radio show.
Not only does 1943's THE MEANEST MAN IN THE WORLD clock in at a meagre 57 minutes but it lacks depth or any moments of real humour. Any one of his radio shows packs more laughs and characterisation into its 30 minute running time than does this movie.
He plays Richard Clarke, a kind hearted and (therefore) unsuccessful small town lawyer who moves to Manhattan in hopes of making his fortune and discovers that behaving like a ruthless heel is the fast track route to  success. His mean reputation brings him a waiting room full of callous clients but it also threatens his romance with hometown sweetheart Janie Brown, played by Priscilla Lane.
Now I'm a huge Jack Benny fan, and I came to this film wanting to like it. His radio shows contain some of the sharpest comedy ever written, and the character he created of Jack Benny the mean, egotistical, childish comedian and deluded violinist is without equal. Far more than simply a collection of catch phrases and jokes, the radio Jack Benny is a three dimensional, living, breathing person.
Which makes THE MEANEST MAN IN THE WORLD even more puzzling.
Why did Benny allow himself to be cast in a part that didn't suit his persona, in a film with a script that is so shallow, juvenile and bereft of good lines that it couldn't fail to disappoint his legions of fans?
Where did the magic disappear to?
It's not simply a case of a radio performer failing to make the transition to the big screen. The
previous year Benny had scored an enormous critical and popular hit with 'To Be Or Not To Be' under the direction of the legendary Ernst Lubitsch. There's no question that he had the acting chops to complement his masterful sense of comedic timing, but what's missing from MEANEST MAN is a quality script. 
The film was made by Twentieth Century Fox at a time when the studio was also hard at work destroying the reputation of Laurel and Hardy with a series of increasingly dire comedy features, and  a similar sense of tired, threadbare desperation pervades MEANEST MAN. There's nothing engaging about the story or the performances and the only incentive to keep watching is the increasingly forlorn hope that some of the familiar magic must burst forth at some point.
With Laurel and Hardy's 40s output that never happened and their stint at Fox proved to be their big screen swansong. Benny was much luckier. He escaped with his career and reputation intact and ended his days as an elder statesman of American comedy.

TROUBLE IN PARADISE: having too much fun at the expense of the rich

From the opening scene of a Venetian garbage man emptying the island city's trash cans onto a gondola garbage barge and striking up an Italian love song as he rows off down the canal it's clear that TROUBLE IN PARADISE is not going to be your standard Hollywood romantic comedy.
Everything about this 1932 film is ever so slightly off kilter and it keeps the viewer ever so slightly off balance too. It takes a while to figure out what's going on and when you do you still can't be sure of what's going to happen next.

The wonderful Herbert Marshall stars as the suave, urbane and sophisticated Gaston Monescu, a man of apparent means who actually earns his living as Europe's most notorious jewel thief. When we first encounter him he's posing as a Baron, living it up in a 5 star Venice hotel and romancing a Countess, Lily, played by Miriam Hopkins. Of course the Countess is not what she seems to be either, and we follow them as they join forces to target Madame Mariette Colet (Kay Fwancis), the wealthy and beautiful owner of a Parisian perfume company.
Under the elegant direction of Ernst Lubitsch the tale which unfolds is a marvelously witty and stylish farce involving concealed identities, romantic entanglements, jealousy, deceit and the contents of the safe in the wall of Madame Colet's bedroom.
It's also racy, taking full advantage of the anything goes attitude to sex prevalent in many pre-code Hollywood films. Lubitsch's style was as far from smutty as it's possible to get but he leaves very little to the imagination when it comes to Gaston and Mariette's lustful designs on each other, and there's nothing coy about their scenes together in her bedroom even though both remain resolutely clothed. The film's response to social mores and respectability - represented by Mariette's two asinine suitors played by Charlie Ruggles and Edward Everett Horton, and C.Aubrey Smith's stuffy chairman of the board of directors of Colet & Cie - is one of complete disdain. These supposedly upright, proper gentlemen are figures of fun and - in at least one case - a fraud hiding behind a front of starched shirt pomposity.
The real fun is to be had by those causing trouble in paradise - Gaston and Lily and, after a little encouragement - by Mariette too. And their brand of humour is infectious. It's impossible not to become caught up in their devil-may-care approach to life, love, right and wrong.
The entire concoction is an absolute delight, an 85 minute time-out from the travails of everyday life which will transport you to a fantasy world of elegance, wit where the dishonest poor triumph every time over the dimwitted, honest rich.