The comedy-mystery or comedy-thriller is a peculiar genre. Bob Hope used to make a lot of these, but I think they have become extinct, which is all to the good. It's a combination that guarantees some awkwardness and tastelessness with its jokes about death, and, in the case of Cairo, a wartime picture whose villains seek to bomb an aircraft carrier and kill 5,000 Americans, a great deal.
This kind of movie also gives a lot of license to the lazy writer. One has the feeling, watching Cairo, that a lot of bad jokes, as well as sloppy and absurd plotting, were let through in the name of irony. Robert Young plays an American newspaperman more unobservant and naive than the average ten-year-old boy (the movie wants to make sure, you see, that even the dimmest viewers realise he is screwing up). Jimmy Stewart might have been able to invest even this awful role with charm, but Robert Young was made for the part of the dumb cluck with nothing left over. (I have read that Louis B. Mayer, puzzled, once asked someone how someone with no sex appeal and nothing else could be a star. I share his bewilderment.)
Jeanette MacDonald, of course, sings ravishingly, particularly the silky ballad "The Moon Looks Down on Cairo," but she looks much older than Young (she was several years older, but looks as if the difference were much greater). They have one kiss, when he is cold and wet and she wraps a blanket around him. To call it maternal would be to credit it with more passion than it has.
The one bright spot is the shamefully underused, in this film as in Hollywood in general, Ethel Waters. She sings one number, Yip Harburg and Harold Arlen's delightful "Buds Won't Bud," and gives the movie the punch and zest it otherwise lacks. (But the choice is odd--it's a sweet little reflective number, and is here given the powerhouse treatment.)
I was for many years curious about this movie and thought it particularly difficult to find--it was never shown on TV. This may have been because of the scene in which Young accidentally fires a gun and immediately a few dozen soldiers rush out with their hands up, shouting, "We're Italians! We surrender!"
This kind of movie also gives a lot of license to the lazy writer. One has the feeling, watching Cairo, that a lot of bad jokes, as well as sloppy and absurd plotting, were let through in the name of irony. Robert Young plays an American newspaperman more unobservant and naive than the average ten-year-old boy (the movie wants to make sure, you see, that even the dimmest viewers realise he is screwing up). Jimmy Stewart might have been able to invest even this awful role with charm, but Robert Young was made for the part of the dumb cluck with nothing left over. (I have read that Louis B. Mayer, puzzled, once asked someone how someone with no sex appeal and nothing else could be a star. I share his bewilderment.)
Jeanette MacDonald, of course, sings ravishingly, particularly the silky ballad "The Moon Looks Down on Cairo," but she looks much older than Young (she was several years older, but looks as if the difference were much greater). They have one kiss, when he is cold and wet and she wraps a blanket around him. To call it maternal would be to credit it with more passion than it has.
The one bright spot is the shamefully underused, in this film as in Hollywood in general, Ethel Waters. She sings one number, Yip Harburg and Harold Arlen's delightful "Buds Won't Bud," and gives the movie the punch and zest it otherwise lacks. (But the choice is odd--it's a sweet little reflective number, and is here given the powerhouse treatment.)
I was for many years curious about this movie and thought it particularly difficult to find--it was never shown on TV. This may have been because of the scene in which Young accidentally fires a gun and immediately a few dozen soldiers rush out with their hands up, shouting, "We're Italians! We surrender!"