This film plays almost like a fairy tale with illiterate scullery maid Franciska Gaal, in her third and last starring role, getting involved with playboy Franchot Tone, who pretends to be a chauffeur just to get into her house and woo her boss' daughter, Rita Johnson. I enjoyed some of the comedy, with the best sequence being the taxicab Gaal buys Tone thinking he lost his job. Billy Gilbert sells her a dilapidated car that looked like it came out of a Laurel and Hardy Film - it falls apart as they drive! And it's so slow a kid on a bike grabs hold of it, not to have it pull him along, but to help pull it along. A very funny sequence. The pacing of the film is just right, but many of the comics in the supporting cast (Reginald Gardiner, Franklin Pangborn and Robert Coote) were wasted. However, Walter Connolly does his exasperated father routine perfectly. Gaal has a down-to-earth naive quality which endeared her to me, so I enjoyed the film. I wondered why she just quit making films altogether after this film.
Review of The Girl Downstairs
The Girl Downstairs
(1938)
A watchable, but unbelievable romantic comedy with some cute twists.
19 March 1999