Boring

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

Sam Goldwyn brought Anna Sten to the United States in 1934 and in between that year and 1956 she appeared in thirteen feature films and some four or five TV shows most of which were pretty ho hum. The problem was that Goldwy's eyes were greedier than his brain, he based his assessment of her strictly on her looks, which were striking, without wondering about her command of English which was, had anyone thought to tell him, non-existent. Of the thirteen feature films only one, So Ends Our Night, was memorable and that was due to the rest of the cast rather than Sten, leaving a round dozen rather like this one, which, somewhat ironically stars another mittel European, Hedy Lamarr, who enjoyed somewhat longer in the front ranks before falling, like Sten, by the wayside. Here she plays a specialist in nervous disorders who has just published a book on the subject. Robert Cummings is a high flyer ad the Advertising Agency hired to promote the book. Cummings is being hotly pursued by Sten, an existing client of the Agency with eyes to wed Cummings. Given this you can perm any two out of three progressions and outcomes and it's no better or worse than any of the dozens of movies sharing the same plot.

I recall listening to Cummings on the radio late evening show in the '60's as he was standing in for Jack Paar. His guest's were Vincent Price, Patricia Morrison ( Kiss Me Kate Broadway fame ) and Hedy Lamarr. The conversation went something like this as their movie came up..."We both rather forget this " and so will I. They laughed it off. HEDY said at the time that she was in the mood for a comedy and though Cummings could play dramatic roles, he also was good in comedies. Unfortunately this role was laboriously done. She also was fond of appearing with a fellow European, Anna Sten, who at one time was being considered as the next Garbo by Samuel GOLDWYN, head of United Artist studios.

Whatever possessed HL to appear in this ridiculous film which panders to the worst excesses of male chauvinism prevalent in Hollywood in 1948.I fully endorse "cheeseplease's" comments.We all know HL was intelligent (co-designer of an electronic torpedo guidance system patented with a male colleague) as well as being very beautiful and I had hopes in this film she would espouse tracts of Freud/Junge and show us her innate well bred poise and intelligence.What we got, or rather what she was "saddled" with, was some airhead of a Hollywood scriptwriter & producer giving us the most facile, unfunny, badly constructed so-called "comedy" screenplay I have seen in a long while.I too found nothing to laugh at in this contrived one dimensional film.I presume that by 1948 in this "B" feature, Hedy was getting rather desperate for good scripts or needed the money.The same goes for Robert Cummings.(How mush better he was in Hitchcock's "Saboteur" (1945) with Priscilla Lane or even his "Dial M For Murder (1953)with Grace Kelly.The subject film never touched on psychiatry presumably because the screen writer and producer knew nothing about it and patronisingly considered it an unfunny subject for American audiences in 1948.That just exposes their ignorance when films like Hitchcock's "Spellbound" (1945) had been filmed.Silly irritating sequences of both leads imagining each other's faces superimposed on other peoples bodies really annoyed me.How could two rational people who had reached an elevated position in their respective careers appear so foolish?Pulling silly faces or reacting in a crass way in these sequences is certainly not funny to an intelligent audience.Why then did I purchase this DVD?Well I had hopes of seeing another good performance by HL like she played in "Come Live With Me"(1941) a witty and literate film opposite Jimmy Stewart.I rate the latter as her best film ever as her own character has verisimilitude as an Austrian refugee - albeit a very beautiful one.At least it is another rare HL film in my collection of her.Verdict - 3/10 could do better.

The situation has potential. A stressed-out ad man meets a beautiful shrink. Object: psychiatric humour. And maybe a little romance.Unfortunately, the result could best be described as innocuous, like some sort of benign medical condition.Bob Cummings plays his usual amiable self. But the real reason anyone would watch this film is, of course, Hedy Lamarr. She looks the way one would expect Hedy Lamarr to look in 1948. Fantastic. She is forced to wear an off-the-shoulder gown at one point to better show off her ... scintillating jewellery. The real conundrum is how Hedy avoided being the top pin-up of World War II. Maybe it was the saltpetre they put in the army chow.Hedy's real-life role as a torpedo guidance system designer -- apparently that story about her is absolutely on the level -- is easier to accept now after seeing her as a no-nonsense, supercilious psychiatrist, sort of an early prototype for Dr. Lilith Sternin Crane.The two Roberts -- Cummings and Shayne -- compete for the attention of Hedy. This gets a little childish with Shayne trying to pump himself up physically at one point. Also, characters often gaze at one another, then see the other person transformed inside a shimmering aura into the object of their true desire. Funny, but both these plot elements -- childish male competitiveness, and idealized shimmering figures -- appeared in a far superior film, "The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer", the previous year, 1947. I'm sure it's just a coincidence.The film has some silly "psychological" dream sequences which are played for laughs, and which for contemporary audiences may have been a mild spoof on Hitchcock's "Spellbound" from 1945.Anyway, it's too bad that all this seems to add up to so little in the end. Bob Cummings co-produced this film. It's a pity he couldn't have hired a script doctor.