The Perfect Woman (1950)

Truly the worst movie I've ever seen in a theater

Perfect cast and a good story

a film so unique, intoxicating and bizarre that it not only demands another viewing, but is also forgivable as a satirical comedy where the jokes eventually take the back seat.

One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

While this film sometimes has the subtlety of a Punch and Judy show, at other times it certainly brought me good laughs, and it milked many jokes out of the Mechanical Woman topic. Then there are foreigner stereotypes about the Italian hotel manager and the Swiss waiter, some being less painful than others. Then again, the catastrophic finale triggered by "love" very well wraps it up... The scenes in the Underground were quite well executed, where the smoking ears were a bit over the top.I watched this shortly after "Die Puppe" (Ernst Lubitsch, 1919) which had a similar concept as center of the plot: an artisan builds a lifelike woman robot as the likeness of his daughter/niece, but for public appearance, the original must double up as the copy, the real woman acting as if she were the robot. A mouse/hairpin destroys the illusion.In this juxtaposition, I found The Perfect Woman a very interesting watch - compare how Ossi Oswalda (in Die Puppe) and Patricia Roc in this play the most difficult role, both halfway plausible, and very charming.I give it 9/10 - not for great cinematic art, but for the fun I had.

What a pity. This film could have been a little gem. But it had an inferior director with no vision, Bernard Knowles, and was totally ruined by almost maniacally unrestrained over-acting by Nigel Patrick and Stanley Holloway, who are about as subtle as a pair of howling hyenas. The story had great promise. It concerns an absent-minded genius who has invented a robot which looks like a woman, and in fact is made to resemble his pretty young niece, charmingly played by Patricia Roc. The niece ends up impersonating the girl robot, to what should have been hilarious effect. However, none of it comes off. The genius is brilliantly played by Miles Malleson, with some terrific comic moments, and there is another superb supporting performance by the always-reliable Irene Handl. But they cannot save the film, alas. If only Nigel Patrick and Stanley Holloway had been replaced by robots, it might have worked.

As a British attempt to do some American 'screwball' comedy, it falls very short of the mark. Perhaps the same vehicle in the hands of someone like Cary Grant could have made it work but not the set of actors in this. As a traditional British farce it works better but not by much, and sadly points up the fact that light comedy was not really Nigel Patrick's forte.In a short role as a effeminate dress sales clerk, Jerry Desmonde goes as far as you could without shouting out 'gay man,' in the days of fifties cinema. Pity his later roles were mainly playing stooge to the likes of Norman Wisdom.This type of broad slapstick farce and comedy of errors was slowly dying out to be replaced by the more subtle Ealing comedies. And wouldn't really return till the more risqué Carry Ons of the swinging sixties.All a bit dated in all and only vaguely amusing in the sense of 'they don't make them like that any more' type of way.

I stumbled upon this movie one afternoon on TV. It's a pacey movie when compared to many British Movies of this era (Bernard Knowles experience as cinematographer on Hitch's 39 Steps may have benefitted him in this respect). The cast are splendid, if somewhat theatrical (English Farce), especially Miles Malleson as the dotty old inventor.What fascinated me most was the similarities I began to notice with the acting of Leslie Banks as Cavendish with that of the exasperation of Basil Fawlty in "Fawlty Towers" a British TV show by ex-python John Cleese. The tortured expressions and heavily exaggerated body language were the first things to alert me to the "FT" connection. But there was more...The pace increased exponentially along with the emerging complications of taking a beautiful female robot (impersonated by Malleson's neice) to a honeymoon suite in a posh hotel until the film ended in total chaos.A foreign servant who spoke very little english and frequently misunderstood his manager's requests (Hmm, Manuel methinks!).