You Belong to Me (1941)

Don't Believe the Hype

Admirable film.

Absolutely the worst movie.

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

One of films so predictable than, except the actors, nothing could become interesting. the problem is not exactly the story or the vision of director or the cliches but the impression to discover, more and more, not the inspired choices. Henry Fonda is far to be credible as playboy/ rich man/ jealous husband . the story is for him a huge ice field in which each step is a fall. Barbara Stanwyck has great efforts for build a convincing character. but dr. Helen Hunt is just a sort of weather vane. Roger Clark looks for the right tone for his Vandemer. but the character is like a puzzle with too many lost peaces. the virtue ? it is a perfect film for the viewer who needs a refuge against blockbusters of the new milennium, familiar actors, easy stories and who real has low expectations.

I usually avoid writing such comments as "Why does this movie have such a low IMDb rating?!" but I'm going to break my own rule this one time. Why does this movie have such a low IMDb rating?! You Belong to Me is of the funniest films I've ever seen, period. Giving me the type of gut busting, side splitting laughter I rarely get from even the funniest of comedies. I was in howls of consistent laughter for 90 minutes; unlike The Lady Eve which I feel looses steam in it's final third. I only watched You Belong to Me in order to become a Barbara Stanwyck-Henry Fonda completest and was expecting something mediocre based on all the negative IMDb reviews but I have to ask the question mankind has pondered since the beginning of time, "What is wrong with you people!? Do you even understand the basic essence of comedy?!!" OK, back to planet Earth. The movie plays out like a newspaper comedy; the setup of a husband neglecting his wife due to his obligations to his job except in this case the profession is a doctor and it's not the man, it's the woman. Peter Kirk (Fonda) acts like a spoiled child throughout the film who doesn't know any better yet he's always too lovable and innocent to ever come off as annoying. Likewise many of his shenanigans and dialogue are very Homer Simpsons like ("Patient dies while doctor ski-ies"). He goes to extreme lengths to have Helen Hunt (not the modern day actress but the character played by Stanywck) as his own with his increasingly humorous paranoia; and while considering Stanwyck's sexuality I can't blame the guy. The man really does look like he's in love with the woman which would come as no surprise as apparently Fonda would tell his later wife he was still in love with Stanwyck. Peter Kirk has no purpose or ambition and doesn't contribute a whole lot to society, unlike his polar opposite wife; the more mature of the two to say the least. Even with this comically absurd pairing I did at times feel somber for the couple.I don't always say this with every romantic pairing I see however after watching all three movies they did together I do believe Stanwyck and Fonda could have been a regular film pairing up with there with the likes of Astaire & Rogers, Powell & Loy and Tracey & Hepburn. The chemistry they share is some of the best I've seen in old Hollywood stars; a match made in heaven if I've ever seen one.

This Barbara-Stanwyck-Henry-Fonda stinker of a movie doesn't really have redeeming qualities. It's rather depressing, in fact, that Dalton Trumbo had written the story on which it's built. I expect better taste from him. However, Trumbo's not the listed screenwriter for this film adaptation. This movie came out seven months after "The Lady Eve." It must have been some desperate attempt to ride the coattails of the earlier Stanwyck-Fonda "Eve" pairing which had a certain charm even though it was just a screwball comedy. Wow, this one, though, has some rather nasty subtexts going on. First and most importantly, Fonda knows from the time he first meets her that Stanwyck is a physician with an established medical practice. Thus, he can have had no doubt that she typically saw a wide variety of patients. In a family practice, that means that she almost certainly would be treating women, children and men as well. However, this movie plot has Fonda making himself embarrassingly jealous over Stanwyck's male patients, as if they all make passes at her and that she, like some mindless tramp with no character, would be seduced by them. That's so insulting to the doctor whom Stanwyck portrays and to all women that it's shocking that even way back in 1941 anyone could have thought it amusing. If Fonda thinks that Stanwyck is or will be a tramp now, or is so stupid as to be gullible enough to be tricked and seduced by her patients, then obviously Fonda would also have to think that Stanwyck had always been just that much of a fool. If seeing male patients now would somehow make her behave as an amoral tramp, then the obvious corollary is that she already must have been behaving as a tramp with her previous patients. In that case, it's stupid to have Fonda written as falling in love with her. He just wouldn't have respected nor trusted her from the beginning. A second big problem, though not as bad as the first one, is that the plot has a Depression-era presumption that Fonda taking a job would rob some other man of any chance to work. Maybe that outlook was a little bit understandable in 1941 because the United States had not entered World War II yet, not till December. It was wartime manufacturing jobs which finally pulled the United States out of the last of the Depression's unemployment morass. Nevertheless, it's just very stupid and shortsighted to assume that one man's job directly causes some other man to go jobless. Oh, yeah, Stanwyck's Edith Head wardrobe is good -- but that's not enough reason to watch this.

You Belong To Me was the final teaming of Henry Fonda and Barbara Stanwyck as a screen team and it was a loan out film for Fonda to Columbia Pictures. Fonda had signed a contract with 20th Century Fox in order to get the Tom Joad part in The Grapes of Wrath. But after that it was usually his loan out films that were good while he was cast in mediocre things at Fox.But the rule was broken here. Though the character he plays bears some superficial resemblance to Charles Pike from The Lady Eve, this film isn't anywhere near as funny. In fact feminists would probably be aghast at it. In fact Barbara Stanwyck herself didn't like it at all. She liked working with Henry Fonda right enough, but thought this film was ridiculous. As well she should have.Fonda is another millionaire playboy, who we would now call a trust fund baby who doesn't really do much with his life. He's sort of lovable lunkhead who meets Stanwyck on a ski slope and literally falls for her trying to show off. Turns out she's a doctor and they have a whirlwind courtship and get married. But it turns out Fonda has a jealous streak, especially when it involves Roger Clark, another millionaire patient of Stanwyck's. And he's not understanding as to her professional obligations.Stanwyck, like Bette Davis and Katharine Hepburn, was and is a feminist icon. When she tells Fonda that he ought to go out in the working world and live on a salary and see if he can do it, Fonda goes out and gets a job as a salesman in a department store. She's so proud of him, that she actually is going to give up her medical practice and live with him on his salesman's salary.Today NOW would be picketing the film. Stanwyck did not have too much conviction in her performance, probably because she didn't believe any of it. I certainly couldn't. I don't think even back then audiences believed it either. But the two stars and the rest of the cast tried their best, but this one was a Thanksgiving special.