ThiefHott Too much of everything

BootDigest Such a frustrating disappointment

Mjeteconer Just perfect...

Voxitype Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

Cineanalyst "Three Smart Girls" is a dated family comedy, which somewhat resembles the later "The Parent Trap" films (1961 and 1998), as others have mentioned, and its lightweight for a Best Picture Oscar nominee, but I see its appeal. The narrative, while convoluted, can be fun to follow because of all its twists and turns--many of which involve the tried and true comedic formulae of masquerade and mistaken identity. Plus, technically, it's a competently put together vehicle for Universal's "new discovery," juvenile actress and singing soprano Deanna Durbin.In it, a mother and her three daughters, along with a maid, are living in Switzerland. They find out that their ex-husband and estranged father of 10 years is set to remarry. Despite a decade of no contact with the man, this upsets the girls deeply. Bizarrely and pathetically, his portrait and pictures populate their home. The youngest girl, Peggy (played by Durbin), comes up with the idea to travel to New York to meet the old man--a father she has no memory of, while her two older sisters, now young women, would only have childhood memories of him--and to make him remarry their mother. When we meet the man, it turns out that he's a deadbeat dunderhead, as well as a successful businessman of some sort, who's being taken advantage of by his gold-digging fiancée and her mother. Now, 80 years past this film, when divorce is commonplace and women's fortunes aren't necessarily tied to keeping a man, at least in the Western world, this film's setup seems particularly ridiculous. Clearly the girls have done well without him, and, at first at least, he clearly wants nothing to do with them, so, good riddance, you'd think. But, no, this is the era when the Hays Code was enforced, so no such depiction of divorce will stand.This coupling extends further to the two older sisters, who each find their own beau in the Big Apple. Meanwhile, Peggy serenades her father--literally, by singing "Someone to Care for Me" to him, as well as with her childish antics and vulnerability bringing out her daddy's previously-suppressed parental instincts. Durbin sings as though she's performing in an opera--her three songs mainly constituting the musical part of this family comedy. This style of singing is quite dated itself, as far as mainstream movies go, but the final song is woven into one of the picture's many scenes of masquerading. Peggy sings to police officers in an attempt to convince them that she's not who she actually is, but rather is in New York to perform at the opera. The main masquerade, besides the gold digger pretending to be in love with rich men, involves the girls and one of their beau's enlisting a Latin lover type, a gigolo Count, to seduce the father's fiancée, Donna, by him pretending to be rich, when in reality he's a poor drunkard. Another man, who is really wealthy and not a drunk, however, is mistaken by the girls for the Count. The rich man pretends to be the poor, drunk Count who pretends to be wealthy to seduce Donna; all the while, he's performing this double case of masquerade because he's attracted to one of the daughters, instead.Such masquerade and mistaken identity plots have been a staple of comedies prior to "Three Smart Girls," including quite a few silent films I've seen based primarily on that theme, and it has continued to be popular--the later "Some Like It Hot" (1959) being one of the best, for example--but it still works here and may even benefit from the plot's overall convolution. Part of the appeal is that it's self-referential, by actors playing characters who act as other characters within the film, and the mistaken identity referring to the spectator's own suspension of disbelief or absorption in the story and characters. Otherwise, "Three Smart Girls" suffers from being dated and contrived and from the "three smart girls" being rather unsophisticated and obnoxious. Technically, wipes are used frequently for editing transitions, and there's a side-by-side multiple-exposure shot of a telephone conversation within wedding rings. Ultimately, there's still some charm left in this classic.

bkoganbing MGM's loss was Universal Studio's gain when Louis B. Mayer sold Deanna Durbin's contract to Carl Laemmle and Universal gave her a grand debut in Three Smart Girls. The three are the Craig sisters played by Nan Grey, Barbara Read, and Durbin as the youngest and the one with the musical talent. But all three are on a mission to bring their mother and father back together.The girls are vacationing in Switzerland when word comes that dear old dad who's been divorced from mom for years is about to be married again. Back to New York come the sisters to save father Charles Winninger from the clutches of mercenary Binnie Barnes and her even more mercenary mother Alice Brady. While on the mission Grey and Read get themselves some romantic involvement also with Dusty King and Ray Milland. It gets a bit complicated though when Read thinks that Milland is a no account count that King hired to woo Barnes away from Winninger. Actually Milland is a titled gent, the guy that King hired was Mischa Auer.In the first of her many roles in the guise, Deanna Durbin plays little Miss Fix-it and solves everybody's problems in the end with a few songs to go with it. It was a formula that worked well for Universal, pulling the studio back from inherent bankruptcy. Abbott&Costello would later make it turn a profit.Three Smart Girls got Oscar nominations for Best Picture, Best Sound and Best Original Story. The fashions and mores of the time place it firmly in the Depression Thirties. I doubt it could ever be made today again.Where would you find a voice like Deanna Durbin's?

Neil Doyle MGM dropped Deanna Durbin after one short subject she made in '36 called "Everybody Sings" with Judy Garland. They kept Garland and dropped Durbin, whereby Universal took a chance on Deanna--who turned out to save the studio from bankruptcy with a string of successful, but formula Durbin films. She would go on playing Little Miss Fix-It in a number of vehicles written for the express purpose of exploiting Durbin's wonderful soprano voice.THREE SMART GIRLS, when seen today, is a charming but very dated tale about three teen-age sisters scheming to reunite their parents. It was the sort of thing MGM would later do with JANE POWELL who, like Durbin, had a pleasing soprano voice and was routinely given the same Miss Fix-It roles, usually in an attempt to reunite her parents too.CHARLES WINNINGER is the father who hasn't seen his daughters in ten years. Daughters DEANNA DURBIN, NAN GREY and BARBARA READ are intent on breaking up their father's romance with "the other woman" BINNIE BARNES. A very youthful RAY MILLAND (looking like a matinée idol), provides the romantic interest for one of the girls.It's all played in very broad style, particularly by ALICE BRADY as Barnes' society mother, filmed in ritzy surroundings that must have seemed terribly unreal to Depression-era audiences and Durbin and the girls are a little too self-confident and condescending in their attitudes to be the likable girls they're supposed to be. But none of it bears much resemblance to reality--a fault of many a classic '30s comedy.The material isn't sufficiently bright enough to keep you from wondering when Deanna will sing again--and it's surprising to learn that this was nominated for Best Picture in 1936.Summing up: Definitely not one of my favorite Durbin films even though she shows her perky personality...nor am I fond of the "Penny" character that she plays here...but when she sings, all is forgiven.

amybeckberger Henry Koster's film is a seamless classical hollywood goal-driven narrative with elements of a musical, romantic comedy and layers of mistaken identity, all accelerated to a final climax and resolution by the interjection of a temporal goal deadline within the film. Deanna Durbin serves as the focal character of the three sisters, all working together to attain one common goal – to break up their estranged father's engagement and to reunite him with their mother. While the sisters work as a united front to achieve their goal, each is developed, in part, using the playful bicker that invariably accompanies the sisters' interactions.This film is also a romantic comedy filmed in the `sophisticated world of the social aristocracy'(1). True to the roots of the big studio Romantic comedies of the 1930's and 40's, this film features lavish settings of wealth and prestige providing an escape, however brief, for movie goers from the depression. The film opens with a display of wealth by depicting the comfortable lifestyle that the girls enjoy with their mother in Europe. During this opening scene in which the sisters are outside on their sailboa t with Durbin singing, merrily sailing down a stream near their home. The narrative goal is set soon after this opening sequence when the sisters are called in for lunch by a housekeeper. Once inside, they discover that their father is to marry a famous glamor girl in the US. Fueled by the desire to quell their mother's sorrow, the girls set off to America to win over their father by turning him away from his pending marriage and stealthily persuading him to return to their mother. Upon their arrival the sisters discover the difficulty of their goal; the fiancee and her mother are aware of the girl's meddling ways and are determined to frustrate the girls attempts at intervention.The bulk of the film is filled with trials and tribulations that both frustrate the girl's goals as well as push them closer to completing their objectives in unplanned ways. The dichotomy of wealth and worth is represented in many ways in this film. Class, social status and money play a pivotal role in the nuances of the plot as the sisters try to get the fiancee to `latch on' to another man who has a title and more wealth. The gold digging nature of the fiancee is pivotal in the many efforts used by the sisters to break the engagement. It is obvious that the engagement is not based on love, which further leads the viewer to root for the girls successful intervention. The fiancee's determination to marry into wealth eventually serves as the key to the girl's success, however unexpectedly, and simultaneously thwarts her own opportunities at such a marriage.The sisters form a powerful team within which each has a very different personality. Each tactic they employ to break up the engagement begins to be thwarted by the romantic entanglements of the 2 older sisters with two of the men they are using to manipulate the fiancee, effectively twisting the plot in on itself many time during the film and providing ample barbing dialogue between the 2 courting couples. (Durbin's character is only 14 years old, so the romantic comedy portions of the film take place in the other characters relations with each other.)Throughout the film, Durbin is asserted as the main character through long, close-up voice solos that solidify her role as the central character. These musical interludes serve also as plot devices to win over adoration and support from her listeners within the film (as well as the audience), bringing her closer to her goals. In a classic use of editing to tell a story, the emotional effect of her voice on other characters is clearly implied using an editing style that switches between an extreme close-up of the singing Durbin and an equally extreme close-up of the expressions of her captivated listeners(1). These interludes also showcase the sound quality of the film The lack of background noise and the clarity and range of her singing voice are used to draw out emotion in the viewer as they get to know more intimately this young character they are rooting for so firmly. The sense of temporal urgency takes hold of the film when the wedding date is suddenly rescheduled for the following day by the sly fiancee and her mother in order to outwit the girls' schemes. This plot twist serves to shift the narrative from goal based to urgently time focused(1). The girls are forced to call on all of the contacts they've made (with a big dose of luck) to succeed in the end. With this shift to a frantic countdown in plot action, the film becomes very compelling, with the outcome uncertain until the very end. The narrative reaches resolution when, in the final scene, the mother arrives from overseas and is greeted by her triumphant daughters and her ex-husband. Although the success of this meeting is far from assured, the development of the daughter's characters as intelligent, persuasive, and strong willed almost convinces the audience of a successful reunion. (1) "American Cinema/American Culture" John Belton, 1994.