Skylark

A wife playing second fiddle to her husband's job was a common theme during Hollywood's Golden Age, and that's the premise that causes all the strife in Skylark, a breezy romcom adapted from a hit Broadway play by Samson Raphaelson, a prolific screenwriter whose most famous films are The Shop Around the Corner and Alfred Hitchcock's Suspicion. Fashioned as a slick vehicle for Claudette Colbert, the queen of Paramount's lot, Skylark delivers snappy dialogue, solid performances, glamorous sets and costumes, and the requisite happy ending. It may not be the perfect movie package, but it's a tidy piece of comedic entertainment.

Society wife Lydia Kenyon (Colbert) looks forward to celebrating her fifth wedding anniversary with her dashing, ad executive husband Tony (Ray Milland), but he's far more enamored of his rich and powerful clients than his devoted, worshipful spouse. Keeping those precious clients happy in and out of the office is Tony's top priority, and his ceaseless sycophantic pandering makes Lydia's blood boil. After Tony defies her during their anniversary party and sucks up to the insufferable Frederick and Myrtle Vantine (Grant Mitchell and Binnie Barnes) one too many times, Lydia reaches the breaking point and files for divorce.

Tony is stunned and becomes even more disturbed when he learns Lydia is dating handsome, sophisticated attorney Jim Blake (Brian Aherne). The loss of Lydia makes Tony realize how much he loves her, and he vows to win her back, yet his methods aren't entirely above board. And because trust is Lydia's top criteria for a reconciliation, the smug, deceptive Tony finds the assignment far more difficult than he envisioned.

There's not a lot of plot in Skylark. The screenplay by Allen Scott, who scripted six Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers musicals and would nab an Oscar nod two years later for another Colbert picture, So Proudly We Hail!, serves up a number of situations that supply most of the humor. The well-drawn characters and witty dialogue keep us engaged, but the outcome is never really in doubt, and the hasty wrap-up feels forced.

Director Mark Sandrich, who helmed five Astaire-Rogers musicals and whose next assignment would be the all-time seasonal classic Holiday Inn, constructs a couple of memorable comic scenes, the most hilarious of which chronicles Lydia's futile attempts to make coffee on the lower deck of Jim's fishing boat during a raging storm. The water-logged floor and violent boat movements wreak havoc on poor Lydia, who gets tossed around like a ragdoll and repeatedly slips and falls while trying to perform the simplest tasks. Colbert channels her inner Buster Keaton and proves she can be a highly capable physical comedienne in a slapstick scene that pre-dates Katharine Hepburn's similar - and more famous - waffle-making debacle in Woman of the Year the following year.

Colbert, as always, exudes a natural elegance. Her role is hardly taxing, but she fully commits to it and laces her portrayal with her trademark intelligence and arch wit. Milland, reportedly a last-minute replacement for Melvyn Douglas, also embraces his unlikable character, exhibiting a pomposity and insensitivity we don't usually see from him, both of which make us wonder whether Tony is really right for Lydia after all.

Aherne is suave and charming, but two supporting players outshine him. Walter Abel excels at playing acerbic sidekicks, and here he perks up every scene in which he appears as Tony's right-hand man and partner in deception. (He would perform that same role to perfection the following year in Holiday Inn.) And nobody ever played a bitchy blue blood better than Binnie Barnes. She and Colbert snipe and bait each other like Alexis and Krystle on Dynasty, and their all-too-brief verbal catfight is one of the film's highlights.

Fans of popular music might think the 1941 standard "Skylark" by Hoagy Carmichael and Johnny Mercer would crop up in the 1941 movie of the same name (I know I did), or that the movie might have inspired the song. Neither is true. The song and film are separate entities, and their appearance in the same year is a pure coincidence. That's a bit of a shame, because the lilting melody surely would have complemented the narrative and increased the picture's appeal.

Skylark is an innocuous romcom, but it's hard to shake the notion that somehow it should be better than it is. Though Colbert, Milland, and the rest of the cast give the material their all, the story lacks the snap, crackle, and pop that pervade the best entries in the genre. To quote the song's lyrics, the film is "faint as a will o' the wisp" and only sporadically "crazy as a loon." A little more looniness and a bit more bite would have elevated this amusing exercise in marital discord.

Vital Disc Stats: The Blu-ray
Skylark arrives on Blu-ray packaged in a standard case. Video codec is 1080p/AVC MPEG-4 and audio is DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 mono. Once the disc is inserted into the player, the static menu without music immediately pops up; no previews or promos precede it.

It doesn't appear as if Skylark underwent any remastering before its Blu-ray release, but the 1080p/AVC MPEG-4 transfer still looks pretty good. Though print damage is present throughout, the nicks and scratches are tolerable, and some clean stretches look very nice indeed. Evident grain maintains the feel of celluloid and faithfully honors the cinematography of 18-time Oscar-nominee (and winner for 1932's A Farewell to Arms) Charles Lang. Deep blacks, bright whites, and a wide grayscale produce a vibrant picture that exhibits good clarity, contrast, and a fair amount of depth. Costume patterns and textures and bits of décor are distinct, and sharp close-ups showcase tears and water drops, Aherne's mustache, and Colbert's impeccable complexion. Though this transfer can't match the quality of a Warner Archive release, it's certainly the best rendering of Skylark to date, and we're thankful Universal has released this title - and several other Colbert films - on Blu-ray.

The DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 mono track supplies clear, well-modulated sound. A bit of surface noise can be detected here and there, and a couple of noticeable pops occur, but the overall aural experience is pleasant. A wide dynamic scale handles all the highs and lows of Victor Young's lyrical music score, and sonic accents like splashing water, a creaky wooden bed, and car engines are crisp. The all-important dialogue is well prioritized and easy to comprehend, and distortion is absent. Although some clean-up and remastering would have perked up the audio, this track is fine as is.

There are no supplements on the disc, not even a trailer.

Skylark is a slick, painless romantic comedy that delivers a fair amount of laughs, but doesn't offer anything particularly fresh. Colbert, as always, is an unqualified delight, and her chemistry with Milland and Aherne keeps the film afloat. Though Universal's video and audio transfers would have benefitted from some remastering, the sources used are good enough, but the lack of extras is disappointing. Still, Skylark is a fun diversion for classics fans and especially admirers of Colbert. Recommended. 

Click to Order: