'Big Brown Eyes' is worth looking into

Big Brown Eyes (1936)
Starring: Cary Grant, Joan Bennett, Walter Pidgeon, and Lloyd Nolan
Director: Raoul Walsh
Rating: Seven of Ten Stars

A police detective (Grant) and his manicurist girlfriend turned-firebrand-newspaper-reporter (Bennett) alternatively bicker and work together to catch a mysterious jewel thief and to find out who fired the shot that accidentially killed a baby in the park.

The script for "Big Brown Eyes" was based on two different short stories, and the stitches show, because there are a number of story elements that don't quite fit together. The most obvious being the clever and refined jewel thief who happens to also be the insurance investigator who is assigned to catch himself (Walter Pidgeon, who takes an excellent turn as the bad guy in this picture) working with a pair of dimwitted henchmen that he doesn't really need. However, the excellent performances given by each and every castmember more than make up for the shortcomings of the script.

From beginning to end, this is a fun movie. The irrational jealousy of Joan Bennett's character toward Cary Grant's when it's obvious he's meeting with a woman as part of his investigation is a little irritating, but, like the above mentioned glitch with the script, it's a flaw that can be forgiven because everything else about her performance and her character is so good. Grant, meanwhile, plays a character that is a little different from what we're used to seeing him as, but he does a flawless job. The two of them make a nice on-screen couple, which is another reason it's easy to forgive the foolish jealousy of Bennett's character.

A personal reason for why I enjoyed this film, which is totally divorced from anything that actually appears in in it, or was intended by the filmmakers, is that in my imagination, the story here serves as a nice "prequel" to the Torchy Blane series--with the characters here being younger, more impulsive versions of the couple featured in those movies.

"Big Brown Eyes" is one of the film included in the five-movie set Screen Legends Collection: Cary Grant. This may be one of the lesser known films that either Joan Bennett or Cary Grant made, but if you're a fan of either actor, it's worth seeking out... and it alone is almost worth the price of the Screen Legends Collection.