Discussion of “Mr. & Mrs. Smith”

In 1940, Alfred Hitchcock’s third American film, Mr. and Mrs. Smith (released in 1941), was a screwball comedy. Yes, that’s right a screwball comedy. And it starred Carole Lombard, who had recently been proclaimed the “Screwball Girl” in a Life magazine profile. Few classic movie fans are familiar with this Hitchcock comedy, even though it was a critical and commercial hit, making its debut at New York’s Radio City Music Hall.

The plot is typical for a screwball comedy. Ann (Lombard) and David (Robert Montgomery) Smith, discover that through a technicality their marriage isn’t legal. After David admits to his wife that if he had it to do all over again, he wouldn’t get married, Ann decides that she doesn’t want to be married either. What follows is a series of events in which each spouse tries to make the other jealous. Ann starts dating David’s law partner Jeff Custer (Gene Raymond) and David takes a room at his club and starts to hang out with a philandering Chuck Bensen (Jack Carson), which leads to some of the film’s funniest moments.

To learn more about the film and to review the discussion questions, click on the link to my blog post below.

https://classicmovieman.blogspot.com/2023/05/carole-lombard-and-robert-montgomery.html
To watch the movie on YouTube, click on the link below.
https://youtu.be/l9w6Bln9mqM