After the drunk scene and the pay cut, the movie has set the stage for the final crushing defeat of a young couple and their starry-eyed hopes for marriage. The scene takes place on New Year’s Eve. Mom has a terrible cold, blowing her nose and sniffling, and Lombard is complaining that she has passed it on to the baby. Stewart and Lombard are all dressed up and lookin’ good (especially Lombard, in silver lamé). They are going out, but their destination is not a happy one. Stewart’s rival, the ghastly Carter, is coming to pick them up for a party in which they know he’s going to announce his engagement to the boss’s daughter. When a former maid (she was number fifteen, and the only one they liked, but they had to let her go for financial reasons) brings them a charity basket from her new employer’s kitchen, it’s the last straw. The film explodes into open quarreling among all three key participants—Lombard, Stewart, and Lucile Watson.
The mastery of the presentation is impressive as the three main characters in Made for Each Other shift focus, drop pretense, and openly turn on one another. From the moment Charles Coburn cynically told Stewart about the nation’s divorce statistics, this marriage has had a question mark in its subtext. The quarrel scene doesn’t tell an audience anything they don’t already know, onscreen and off-, and it doesn’t refute anything they’ve seen and observed in both places. It confirms their familiarity with trouble and disappointment. Stewart’s mother is bitter. She’s old, has no home of her own, and has lost her son to Lombard, whom she resents. Lombard is genuinely angry with her situation. She has to do all the cooking, cleaning, mothering (to both mate and child), and she’s also caught between her mother-in-law and her husband. Mom criticizes everything Lombard does, but the unhappy and disappointed Stewart isn’t strong enough to do anything about it. All three have had it—and all three let go on each other, no sides taken. Finally Stewart yells, “I can’t stand it anymore!” and stomps out. After a stunned moment, Lombard grabs her coat and follows. As she catches up to him on their apartment stairs, she cries out in despair, “Oh, Johnny, what’s happened to us?”
“What’s happened to us?” is a key question always asked by the true marriage movie. Asking it was what the audience needed, and it’s obviously a main purpose of the form. It no doubt echoed the thoughts of many couples in the audience, and the fears of many others, maybe even the happy ones. It was a question for which the movies had no answer other than “Get your coats and go out to a movie with Stewart and Lombard”—a movie that could perhaps in some way reassure them or at least make them feel that if the beautiful people like the ones onscreen had troubles, no wonder they and theirs were experiencing the same.
Asking the question—but resolving its problem with no real answer—was the modus operandi of the marriage movie. Every marriage movie comes to its question of “What happened to us, Johnny?”—which is followed as quickly as possible by a resolution reaffirming the couple’s marriage. If the film is a tragedy, the spark to reunite will come from some shared disaster; and if it is a comedy, it will come from some hilarious revelation or tricky device. These sparks, given what an audience has lived with for ninety minutes, need to be conflagrations; but marriage films close down their plots rather suddenly, emphatically, with inexplicable reunions grounded in some imagined need for everyone to go home with the concept of marriage intact. The party’s over. The teacher has returned to the room.
Following the quarrel scene, Made for Each Other moves Lombard and Stewart to the inevitable decision that their marriage doesn’t work. This is a moment of delicate balance, in which the audience must believe in the trouble but not let go of the belief that their stars can fix it and live happily ever after. Standing on the stairs, the couple decide to just go out on the town for New Year’s Eve and to hell with everything. They’re then suddenly seen at a glamorous party, with noise and merriment all around them. If you walked in on Made for Each Other at this point, you would see two very beautiful people inside what might appear to be a classic example of Hollywood escapism: balloons, music, tuxedo and lamé, star power looking at star power across a nightclub table.
There is almost always a moment in a “realistic” Hollywood marriage film in which the movie will suddenly reveal itself as not all that realistic. It’s a shift into a different visual universe, as in TV’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer when her evening’s date suddenly gets those wavy lines upside his nose, and fangs sprout on his teeth. (No wonder the best-looking guy in school asked you out! He wants to drink your blood!) In Made for Each Other, the fangs appear at the New Year’s Eve party. Lombard and Stewart, their marriage in shambles, their lives going nowhere, both feeling trapped and disillusioned, are suddenly in the middle of a riotous celebration. Lombard is shown in radiant close-up, her backlighting perfect, her hair blonder than blond, her makeup natural yet glamorous, her corsage fresh, and her lamé sparkling away. Her huge eyes and perfect bone structure are on full display. Across from her, the young Jimmy Stewart—noble, exuding intelligence and integrity—makes a decision. “Maybe the whole thing’s been a mistake,” he says. He outlines the issues: he’s gotten into debt, gotten nowhere at the office, and—here comes the kicker—he’s made a household drudge out of her! Just as he points this out, the film cuts to a close‑up of Carole Lombard. She sparkles, she radiates, and she’s dressed like a million bucks. Household drudge? As the film brings the audience to the low point of what they might feel, have felt, or fear they may be going to feel about marriage—the moment of maximum honesty—the images pull a viewer out of truth and sharply back into glamour, a shaky form of reassurance. “I’ve made a household drudge out of you” indeed.
Carole Lombard, aglow with glamour, is supposed to be believed as a household drudge, and that’s Stewart’s solemn explanation of why they must part. Because of her drudge-ism, he can no longer hold her to their marriage contract. Well, why not decide to believe it? The leads are snatching a New Year’s Eve out for themselves, just as the couples in the audience are doing the same thing at the movies. When the film gently reminds viewers that they are at the movies, it’s also reminding them that they’re in on the game. (As they said on Seinfeld, “Not that there’s anything wrong with that.”) The movie has done its job. It’s told a believable story of a marriage between two young people who didn’t really know each other and who moved too quickly toward a permanent union. Things have gone wrong, and they’re stuck. Okay, that’s enough of that. Made for Each Other needs to wrap it up, put all the broken pieces back together, and send everyone home. It needs to move toward its inevitable “I still do.”
Just as Stewart and Lombard decide to give up because of their little problems, they get a big one. Word comes to them at the party that their baby is dying of pneumonia. (Mom and her damned cold—escalated by plot.) Stewart has to confront Coburn and demand money to have a special serum flown in (through a blizzard—nothing is easy here), and suddenly Coburn turns into a swell fella who helps them out. Their baby is miraculously saved, Stewart is made a junior partner, and the marriage is repaired. Even Mom goes all human in reaching out to Lombard, feeling guilty about having given her cold to the baby. (To help an audience digest this, Lombard diagnoses what’s been wrong with the old bat: “Why, you’re lonely!”)
Jane and Johnny Mason are “realistic.” Two lovely stars play the couple, and the story humorously delineates recognizable problems that could confront any marriage, topped off by a highly improbable crisis that can easily resolve those same problems. It’s both discouraging and reassuring. This pattern of pretense toward honesty, capped off by exaggerated resolution, was the “I do” marriage movie pattern. Affirm, question, reaffirm, and resolve. Destroy a marriage in order to reassemble it as a form of glamorous reassurance.
A similar story was released only a few months later, in early 1940, verifying the format. We Who Are Young was designed as a vehicle in which MGM could showcase two young performers they were hoping to develop into stars: Lana Turner, on the brink of stardom, and John Shelton
, just on the brink. A cross between Robert Taylor in looks, Robert Walker in youthfulness, and Dennis Day in lack of leading-man gravitas, Shelton never became a star, though he would appear in such films as Dr. Kildare Goes Home (1940) and The Time of Their Lives (1946).
We Who Are Young (like Made for Each Other) begins by telling the audience that there are lots of people out there and that this movie will be about the ordinary ones. A voice-over says: “This is the city of New York, the biggest sprawl of men and masonry on the face of the earth. Her feet in the dirt, her head in the sky. Seven and a half million people live here side by side. The righteous and the unrighteous. Every week two thousand of them are born … Day in and day out, stories leap from the front pages of a million newspapers. Important people, as any editor can tell you, make better copy, and yet … ” etc., etc.
Like Made for Each Other, We Who Are Young shows no prior onscreen relationship, no romantic courtship. When the movie begins, Turner and Shelton are standing in front of a judge, speaking their vows. When they go to a hotel for their wedding night, they tell each other their dreams. “I’m gonna lick this town,” Shelton says. He’ll get a better job … a car … clothes for her, maybe a fur coat. (The fur coat was an enormous status symbol during the 1930s, ’40s, and ’50s.) Turner says, “If we really make money, I’d like to take a trip.” She also wants “a little house … trees around.” The audience is also allowed to hear their secret thoughts—the unshared information—through voice-overs. He thinks: “This is serious. This is for life. I’ve got to get ahead and I’ve got to make some money. Gosh, she’s so beautiful! My wife.” She thinks: “Tomorrow we go back to work, but tonight is our honeymoon. It’s just as I always hoped it would be … How did I ever get him? … Gosh, he’s so handsome!” Out loud she solemnly says to him, “I’m going to try to be a good wife.”
The opening immediately establishes their inexperience, that they’ve been drawn together by surface looks and (just like Lombard and Stewart) have no real knowledge of each other. Shelton’s dreams are big. He is driven to succeed, and his need to achieve is related to himself as much as to his marriage. Turner’s dreams are smaller, more domesticated, and she is far more practical in thinking about tomorrow instead of a long-range future. But they are married, and their marriage is like the one from Made for Each Other minus the live-in mother-in-law. There’s an uncaring boss who doesn’t appreciate what a good person he has in Shelton. There are furniture payments that lead to debt. There’s a pregnancy that comes along too soon. There’s financial trouble when Turner gets fired because the company finds out she and Shelton are married, and they don’t hire married couples. (“A man who gets married should be able to support his wife,” says the boss. “And with millions of men out of work, it isn’t right for married women to take their jobs.”) In the end, though, these issues blow away. Like Made for Each Other, the movie was designed to connect directly to realistic marital problems and then easily resolve them with a sudden change of direction. Turner gives birth to twins, a boy and a girl, while Shelton is offered, not one, but two excellent jobs. “This is the city of New York,” the voice-over solemnly intones. Films such as Made for Each Other and its cheaper counterpart We Who Are Young demonstrate the basic marriage movie in its forward, most optimistic variation.
Proving the format could endure—that it was basic—twenty-eight years after Made for Each Other, in 1967, an allegedly more sophisticated and modern marriage movie was released. Two for the Road starred Audrey Hepburn and Albert Finney as Joanna and Marc, two characters inside an intelligent and complex script (written by Frederic Raphael). Two for the Road could easily be the story of John and Jane Mason from Made for Each Other, or even Blondie and Dagwood, if either of those two couples had been rich, well dressed, and casual about their wedding vows. Although there are differences between Made for Each Other and Two for the Road regarding sex, fashion, and automobile design, the films tell the same story underneath. Despite its shaky morality, slick surface, and open ending, Two for the Road is a traditional “I do” marriage movie. It’s a very shaky form of “I do”—a kind of “Well … I kinda do”—but it is an “I do.”
Made for Each Other was a movie grounded in two places: Jimmy Stewart’s workplace (his domain) and his apartment (the domain of Carole Lombard—and, sadly, his mother). The film was released at a time when couples married, moved into a home, and had children while the man tried to climb the ladder of success. If they went anywhere, it was out to a New Year’s Eve party. (Stewart and Lombard didn’t even make it to their honeymoon.) Two for the Road is set in the world of the Sexual Revolution. There is no real need for the couple to be married or build a home together. It takes place literally on the road, with the couple driving in different cars over shifting time frames. It never once depicts the home base in which the couple actually live. They are always travelers and visitors, never dwellers. Their domicile is their car; and although it provides them with constant mobility, nothing ever really changes for them. They argue but stay together. Their progress is strictly economic and their change only geographic.
Two for the Road has a highly sophisticated cinematic presentation, and is well directed by Stanley Donen. The couple journey backward and forward in time, revealing how their relationship grew and how it changed, and ironically asking the same question that Made for Each Other asked: “When did it all start to go wrong?” (“What happened to us, Johnny?”). Two for the Road is a film shaped by editing, and transitions are made by lines of dialogue and images that violate temporal honesty. For instance, the young Finney and Hepburn are hitchhiking, but no one stops to pick them up. As an audience hears them vow that when they are rich and have a car, they will absolutely pick up every hitchhiker they see, the image moves them forward in time, their car now zooming past a young couple with their thumbs extended. Hepburn and Finney don’t even consider stopping.
Two for the Road’s story is told in six major time units, which are overlapped and juxtaposed for ironic comment. By removing all transitions and indications of change and by juxtaposing time frames ironically, the movie speaks cinematically about what happens in a marriage: as time passes, it gets edited and loses its original frame of reference. Each time frame is marked by a trip to Europe and a traveling format. First they don’t have a car … then they ride in someone else’s station wagon … then they have a secondhand green MG that dies on them … then they upgrade to a natty little red sports car … and in the end, they’re secure inside a very expensive white Mercedes convertible. The cars—as well as Hepburn’s clothes and hairdos—mark, not only the passage of time, but also the constant upgrading of their financial and social status. In chronological order, the time frames are:
1. Hepburn and Finney first meet as college-aged travelers, she with a musical girl group on its way to a European festival, traveling in a VW minibus, and he on a hitchhiking journey through Europe to see “buildings” (he’s an architect). All the other girls get chicken pox, so Hepburn and Finney set off alone and fall in love.
2. Wed for two years, they undertake a car trip through France (in a big American station wagon) with Finney’s former girlfriend (Eleanor Bron), her obnoxious husband (William Daniels), and their truly horrible little daughter.
3. They undertake a low-budget camping vacation, driving through Europe in an old green MG. They’re struggling financially and live in a basement apartment in London (which the audience never sees). During this journey, the car catches on fire and they meet an older French couple (Claude Dauphin and Nadia Grey) who will become their sponsors. Hepburn tells Finney she is pregnant with their first child.
4. Finney, now working for Dauphin and loving his success, is obsessed with his career. During this time frame, Hepburn is seen mothering their daughter, Caroline, while Finney often has casual affairs. His focus is on the upward trajectory of his career.
5. Finney and Hepburn reach a plateau of success, but Hepburn is lonely and neglected—though very
well dressed. She embarks on a serious affair with a dapper Frenchman, and Finney is shocked and possessive. They reconcile.
6. Finally, in the “present tense” of the film, in which the story opens, Finney and Hepburn, rich and bored and in their marital rut, have loaded their expensive car onto an Air Ferry and are traveling to the fancy party Dauphin is giving to celebrate his new home, built by Finney. Caroline has been left behind with her nanny. This story unit begins and ends the movie—which means it begins and ends with an argument.
The story of the marriage between Audrey Hepburn and Albert Finney in Two for the Road is summed up: she pushes to make things go forward and he takes it easy with cigar and map. (Photo Credit 2.6)
Two for the Road qualifies as an updated example of the traditional marriage movie because it begins with Finney and Hepburn already wed and arguing about their situation. The first sound is of wedding bells, as they drive past a local ceremony and peek out at the newlyweds. “They don’t look happy,” says Hepburn. “Why should they?” counters Finney. “They just got married.” This “present time” journey introduces the audience to a motif that will be repeated: Finney always loses his passport, and Hepburn always has to keep track of it for him. (He never remembers she’ll have it.) In other words, he needs her, and she looks after him. As they drive, their voices are heard on the sound track: “You haven’t been happy since the day we met, have you?” she asks him. “There was a time when you were happy to go on a trip with me,” he replies. Hepburn looks out the window of the Air Ferry and down below sees the cheaper channel ferry chugging along. On that boat is their youth—and the movie begins its back-and-forth movement across their lives together, and the development of their relationship, which is seen to be problematic from the very beginning. The young version of themselves met on that ferry—when, in fact, he first lost his passport and she first found it.
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