Movie: That Uncertain Feeling (1941)

Ernst Lubitsch had an amazing run of features in the late 30’s and early 40’s, a period that included Ninotchka, The Shop Around the Corner and To Be or Not To Be.  Unfortunately, he also did 1941’s That Uncertain Feeling.

This screwball comedy is uneven in every regard: plot, script, performances.  It is like it never knows what it wants to be, or at least which tone it wants to apply to the material.

It even seems to shift at random which of its three leads (Merle Oberon, Melvyn Douglas and Burgess Meredith) it wants us to identify with.  I can admire its attempt to generate empathy for each of them; however, I found all three largely unlikeable.

The film opens with Oberon souring on her marriage to Douglas.  She is particularly annoyed by something I can only guess was once endearing, which is he keeps poking her in the stomach and going, “KEEK!”  After she tells him how much she hates him doing that, we get a title card saying “And so the keeks go out of another marriage…”

About that card—these appear in the film at other times and more frequently than I would have expected.  I wonder why the decision was made to use these, as they disrupt the already clunky flow.  Also, they bring to mind the era of silent film, which I thought the motion picture industry was trying to forget about by that time.

Oberon goes to a psychiatrist (Alan Mowbray), who soon has her questioning her marriage to Melvyn Douglas.  To think, all she had gone to see him for was she gets hiccups when she gets upset.  I liked Mowbray’s character, which is underused here.  The dialogue is especially good in their scenes.  Consider this exchange between him and her: “Don’t you want to get to know yourself?”  “No.  I’m a little shy.”

Another Lubitsch regular, and bit role regular, I always enjoy seeing is Sig Ruman.  This time, he’s the Hungarian owner of a mattress company whom Douglas hopes to insure through his firm.  A scene that should be hilarious but doesn’t really go anywhere is the dinner at the apartment of Oberon and Douglas.  She is supposed to say a Hungarian phrase that is the equivalent of “bon appetite” or something in a similar vein.  With that buildup, there should be a hilarious payoff, likely her mangling it in some way that renders it nonsensical or even offensive.  Instead, she gets it right, the Hungarians are thrilled and that’s that.  No payoff.

Another dinner guest is Meredith as a concert pianist who is good enough to have played Carnegie Hall.  Oberon met this miserable misanthrope in the waiting room of Mowbray’s office.  And yet she invited him to dinner and here he is to play their piano for the gathered guests.  He plays so long that it is morning before he finishes.  The only person remaining is an enthralled Oberon.

Her infatuation seems to be entirely based on what she believes to be noble artistic inclinations, especially compared to what she perceives to be the lower and base interests of her husband.  At first, Douglas does seem to be unpleasant in his hasty dismissal of classical music and modern art.  Then the movie has us siding with him, as even Oberon tires of Meredith’s quirks.

Douglas’s masterplan has him surrendering his wife to Meredith and then waiting until she’s so annoyed with the crank that she comes back to him.  He even encourages the new man in her life to “keek” her, claiming it’s something she loves.

So, a great deal of the movie ends up being her trying to get divorced, then losing her nerve, then finding it again.  Just back and forth and back and forth while Douglas finds new passive-aggressive ways to annoy the couple.  In the film’s most jaw-droppingly repellent scene, it is decided he must hit her in front of a witness in order to have grounds for the divorce they supposedly both want.  The conclusion of this scene is Oberon realizes she still loves Douglas because after he finally slaps her, as “he had to get drunk to do it”.  Apparently, you know it’s love when you have to get drunk to commit spousal abuse.

The title of The Uncertain Feeling definitely applies to a movie I so much wanted to like, but was thoroughly repulsed by its three leads.  Being a Lubitsch film, it still has some clever dialogue (“The artist hasn’t found himself yet.”  “And when he does, where will he be?”) but there isn’t enough of it and many lines that should be funny don’t ring true when coming from the mouths here.  I’m not sure this is a film I will ever be revisiting, so maybe I should take to heart a line Meredith says about a vase he hates so much: “It’s ugly.  Let’s put it away.”

Dir: Ernst Lubitsch

Starring Merle Oberon, Melvyn Douglas, Burgess Meredith

Watched on VCI blu-ray