Claudette Colbert and Robert Ryan are both too old for this screwy tale of a wedding interrupted by the claim that the bride is already married. She looks far too matronly-sensible to be driven insane, as she is, by a lot of suborned witnesses (or actors) who, apparently, wait at home for Colbert and Ryan to come calling on them (and who somehow manage to ensure that they will be in a certain hotel room rather than any of the others). He is a far too interesting actor to waste on a script that has him either rushing around after clues or consoling Claudette. And why is she a successful concert pianist? We expect that, or at least her sensitivity to sounds and music, to have something to do with the story, but it is just a pointless detail.
So terrible is the writing that we never find out who killed the murdered man or how! (He was alone in a room with Claudette when he was suddenly shot dead. Did the instigator of the plot pay him so much that he was willing to kill himself?) And, if you are still suspending disbelief, the movie cuts it loose in the final scene, in which Claudette, who has been incarcerated in a high-security mental institution, has managed to escape, to travel at least several miles back to her home, and to acquire a loaded gun!
The movie aims to start on a cute note by showing Ryan walking into the house where he is to be married and being refused admission because he does not have an invitation. He meekly goes out and tries to get in the back way, but a security guard blocks him there too. Why on earth doesn't he say he is the groom and prove it with some ID? The writers may have been pleased with their supposedly humorous idea, but it's not funny because it doesn't make any sense. Who except Caspar Milquetoast would behave that way? Certainly not Robert Ryan!
So terrible is the writing that we never find out who killed the murdered man or how! (He was alone in a room with Claudette when he was suddenly shot dead. Did the instigator of the plot pay him so much that he was willing to kill himself?) And, if you are still suspending disbelief, the movie cuts it loose in the final scene, in which Claudette, who has been incarcerated in a high-security mental institution, has managed to escape, to travel at least several miles back to her home, and to acquire a loaded gun!
The movie aims to start on a cute note by showing Ryan walking into the house where he is to be married and being refused admission because he does not have an invitation. He meekly goes out and tries to get in the back way, but a security guard blocks him there too. Why on earth doesn't he say he is the groom and prove it with some ID? The writers may have been pleased with their supposedly humorous idea, but it's not funny because it doesn't make any sense. Who except Caspar Milquetoast would behave that way? Certainly not Robert Ryan!