Mitchell Leisen – Hands Across the Table (1935)
Quote:
Hotel manicurist Regi Allen is a cynical gold-digger who meets her match in Theodore ‘Ted’ Drew III, the penniless scion of a once-wealthy family who is himself about to marry for money. After a date with Ted, she lets him sleep on her couch when he’s too drunk to get any further. But what is she to think when he wants to extend the arrangement?
A sparky, spunky gem from the underrated Mitchell Leisen featuring a young and more than competent Fred MacMurray alongside the peerless Carole Lombard. Released in 1935 just after the Hays Code came into full force, it somehow smuggled a very pre-code sensibility past the moral enforcers.
This is an ever-so-slightly bittersweet comedy that’s heavily influenced by the screwball style rather than fully representative of it (the imprint of Paramount’s recently-appointed production manager Ernst Lubitsch is unmistakable). It’s often overlooked in discussions of notable 30s comedies, unfairly in my opinion. Hands Across the Table outshines many more celebrated films from the era (Howard Hawks’ Twentieth Century and Gregory La Cava’s My Man Godfrey come to mind).
Hands.Across.the.Table.1935.576p.BluRay.AAC1.0.x264-KnK.mkv
General
Container: Matroska
Runtime: 1 h 20 min
Size: 2.37 GiB
Video
Codec: x264
Resolution: 788x576
Aspect ratio: 4:3
Frame rate: 23.976 fps
Bit rate: 3 998 kb/s
BPP: 0.367
Audio
#1: English 1.0ch AAC @ 105 kb/s
#2: English 2.0ch AAC @ 122 kb/s (Commentary by filmmakers Allan Arkush & Daniel Kremer)
Language(s):English, mono AAC (main audio); English, stereo AAC (commentary)
Subtitles:English srt
