Honeymoon in Bali (1939)
Bill Burnett, a resident of Bali, visits New York City, meets and falls in love with Gail Allen, the successful manager of a Fifth Avenue shop, who is determined to remain free and independent. Bill proposes, Gail declines and Bill goes home to Bali. But a young girl, Rosie, and Tony the Window Cleaner, who dispels advice on every floor, soon have Gail thinking maybe she was a bit hasty with her no to Bill's proposal. Ere long she discovers that she does love Bill and can't live without him. She goes down to Bali to give him the good news. He learns that he is soon to marry Noel Van Ness. She goes back to New York City.
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It's no definitive masterpiece but it's damn close.
An Exercise In Nonsense
Absolutely Fantastic
The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.
Last night I watched HONEYMOON IN BALI, with Fred MacMurray and Madeleine Carroll. Before I sat down to watch it, I violated one of my cardinal rules and read user reviews on the IMDb plus Maltin's comments (usually, I do that after I finish watching something). I expected Maltin in particular to call it fluff, since it was a rom-com from the late 30s made in the way that only Paramount could make them. So as I started watching, the first twenty minutes are rather slow and almost tedious. I thought to myself, why did Maltin give this three stars out of four...why do IMDb users love this film so much? But after another half hour, it became very clear-- the characters suddenly came to life and the romance was believably and beautifully told. It had worked its magic on me, because the actors found something in those characters-- and the script itself had developed the characters so well that you couldn't help but love the film. I plan to watch it again in the very near future.
"Honeymoon in Bali" is a sweet romance that has inexplicably fallen into the public domain. Often, public domain films suck--but this one is far from sucky.The film is about a nice guy who has returned to the States to visit, though Bill (Fred MacMurray) lives in Bali (that's a very large island in Indonesia, if you care). After having a fortune teller inform her she'd meet someone, Gail (Madeline Carroll)--a high-powered career woman. The two kind of hit it off, but Gail isn't convinced that Bill is the man the fortune teller told her about...after all, he is moving back to Bali and she has her career. She also has a boyfriend already, and Eric (Allan Jones) seems like a very nice guy. However, when Gail meets Bill's young ward (Rosie, played by Carolyn Lee), her heart is captured. But how can Gail have Bill and Rosie in her life? After all, they're returning to Bali and she has her career...as well as Eric.The scenes between MacMurray and Carroll were very nice and they worked well together. However, the scenes between Carroll and young Lee were magical. Lee was perfect--adorable, but not too much and seemed very natural. I do wonder why she only had a few screen credits. Regardless, due to a nice story, very good dialog and some nice characters (Eric is exceptionally sweet), the film is just fun and a decent date film. Well worth seeing and available on YouTube and most likely also from archive.org since it's a public domain film.
Can't you see them on Bali when the war in the Pacific heats up? Does our hero join the US military and leave, or stay on Bali to help in the defense? Do his wife and little girl flee successfully or get captured? There would be the big reunion scene where he is injured but still the same fellow no matter what the war has done to him externally. I can hardly watch a Pacific island movie in that era without picturing gunships and islands soon to be overrun by soldiers.I liked the little girl. Her not being able to sing the ditty right was a cute answer to Shirley Temple's extreme acumen. But kids in movies are a matter of taste.The part about a woman without a husband and child being like someone missing an arm was grim and insulting to her friend who was single and childless. What the priest and the window washer said, though, was quite good. In the Forties the message would be much more in favor of strong independent women, but during the war, movies didn't want to discourage Rosie the Riveter from performing her duties.On the whole I'd have to say some of it was good, some awful, and all of it predictable. The French woman and the window washer were the only characters I found interesting. What a plot device! Laying the movie out in the first few minutes with a psychic reading. Talk about a spoiler! And the little girl was just sort of thrown into the storyline without any preparation or foundation for her being there except as a way to show that a real woman is emotional and motherly. Of course women and men actually come in many variations. I think the movie tried to engage in a discussion of male and female roles in society and failed miserably because it was the same old story of a bossy repressed woman dominated by a strong unrepressed man who takes her from her career and turns her into a wife and mother, which is her happy ending. It makes me long for His Gal Friday, out the next year in 1940.
I also found this movie at a $1.00 bin. What a beautiful surprise! The movie was quick,romantic,funny,with an intelligent plot. The characters were all individually unique, from the window washer,fortune teller, to the singing telegram boy. I love little Rosie so much in this movie I tried looking up her biography. The emotion conveyed in this movie lead me to watch it over and over again. Each scene can stand alone. The intrigue with the fortune teller's predictions, Allan Jones' voice was marvelous. Fred MacMurray's acting continues to amaze me. His character has such sex appeal and magnetism. It makes me wonder how many of these movies are out there that haven't been seen.