HAS ANYBODY SEEN MY GAL? (Sirk, 1952) - The occasion for our getaway last weekend was that BF and I have now been dating for three years, and one of his anniversary presents for me was a lovely Sirk DVD box*, which includes pretty much all the notable films (with the possible exception of THERE’S ALWAYS TOMORROW), and a couple of lesser known ones - this movie being one of them. In some respects it’s typically Sirkian: the artificially gorgeous backdrops, the importance accorded to society standing (and gossip), Rock Hudson as an oh-so-hot but poor suitor, etc. However, the genre might surprise you: this is not a melodrama, but a comedy, a musical one at that, and with a strong anti-capitalist message to boot. Also, for a change, the children are not the horrid, selfish ones - nope, it’s the mother who comes off worst.
Let me rewind a bit and talk about the plot, because it’s deliciously ridiculous: once upon a time, Samuel Fulton was in love with Millie. She rejected him for a bookkeeper, and he became “the richest man in the United States” - and a hypochondriac grump, played with a twinkle by Charles Coburn. He wants to bequeath his whole fortune to the late Millie’s family, but decides to move in with them (posing as a poor artist) to check them out. The father is a struggling pharmacist, the mother a horrid woman who pushes her daughter** to marry her obnoxious but rich suitor instead of Rock Hudson, oh, and there’s a slightly misguided son and a mischievous younger daughter too. So far, so typical, and you expect the happy ending to be that they discover that they’re to be rich. The movie’s twistier than that though: gramps decides to donate 100k (the movie takes place in the 20s, so that would be well over a million in today’s money), anonymously of course, and well… I’ll just say the movie doesn’t end there.
I have to say, while the musical sequences are awkwardly tacked on and some of the more slapstick-y comedy falls flat, I had a blast with this movie. It’s all candy-colored and in some scenes improbably wholesome (see above), but as always with Sirk, there’s a biting undercurrent. It’s worth championing - and championing seems to be necessary, as it’s been checked a grand total of 13 times on icheckmovies. It’s often a bit of a mystery to me which movie are remembered and which are forgotten, but while this one deserves to be filed under ‘minor Sirk’, it’s more fun than most curiosities like that.
*the others were a moleskine film journal and Dave Eggers’ Zeitoun. Yes, I know. No, you can’t have him :-)
** Piper Laurie, who doesn’t look here like she’ll grow up to be Carrie’s mom.
