The Major and the Minor (1942)

An Exercise In Nonsense

It's not great by any means, but it's a pretty good movie that didn't leave me filled with regret for investing time in it.

Excellent characters with emotional depth. My wife, daughter and granddaughter all enjoyed it...and me, too! Very good movie! You won't be disappointed.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

Ray Milland plays the army Major (Philip Kirby) who meets Ginger Rogers (Susan Applegate) on a train as she is pretending to be a 12-year-old. That's quite a stretch for an actress who is age thirty, but director Billy Wilder found that audiences will accept such credibility testers in a comedy. And Ginger shows some versatility in the role."Little" Susan is on her way back home to Iowa after rejecting the values of the big city. Along the way, her trip is sidetracked as are her intentions. Diana Lynn (Lucy Hill)is a teen who sees through Susan's ruse and sets her on another path. This is Miss Lynn's second credited role and her talent is readily apparent. (Six years prior, at age 10, she was a child prodigy as a pianist; she was also a recording artist.)Miss Rogers earned her Academy Award for "Kitty Foyle" only two years earlier. Ray Milland's famous portrayal in "The Lost Weekend", which will win him the Oscar, will follow in only three years. Both of them were well cast in "The Major and The Minor". The script, written in part by Billy Wilder, is full of humor and heart. About the filming, Ginger Rogers wrote, "I believe I had more fun playing this role than any other, with one exception...'Kitty Foyle'." She reported that Billy made things easy and respected her as an actress. The joy the actors experienced making the film may have contributed to the final product's enjoyability. Ginger also enjoyed her mother being on set, playing the mother of her character in a small role.This American directorial debut by Billy Wilder shows the promise that his later films would deliver on.

The Major and the Minor is the kind of movie that holds up very, very well – and yet could never be made today. Know why? Because it's about a grown woman who pretends to be 12 years old (!) in order to pay only half fare to get home from NYC to Ohio and falls for a grown man along the way. That may sound innocent enough, but of course the grown man finds himself falling for the grown woman whom he believes is 12 years old. In hindsight, that's a little creepy.But here, it's not. This movie is hilarious. This was Billy Wilder's first movie as a director, and the faith placed in him by the studio – and the movie's stars, Ginger Rogers and Ray Milland – paid off handsomely. It's hard to believe now, but Wilder had already earned three Oscar nominations for writing before directing a single film. He wound up with a pretty decent career.Rogers plays Sue Applegate, a young lady trying to make a living in New York. Frustrated after a year in the big city, she decides to head back home; trouble is, the train fare has gone up by about $5, and our gal Sue doesn't have enough. So she gets this funny idea – she'll dress like a kid, complete with pigtails and a balloon, and pay only half fare. Sue's plans hit a major snag when she's found out by the conductor, and she hides in the compartment of one Major Kirby (Milland). Hilarity ensues when Kirby's fiancé finds Sue – known as Su-Su – with her betrothed, but soon all of that is cleared up and "Su-Su" must spend a few days with her friend the Major.Shenanigans ensue, as you might expect. The movie is witty and delightful, with some zingers zooming almost faster than one can process them. Rogers and Milland are at the top of their comedic game, too. Among the talented supporting cast are Robert Benchley ("My only regret is that I have but one wife to give for my country"), Diana Lynn as the fiancé's sister, and Rogers' own mother Lela, playing, yes, her mother.

Shot during the second World War, "The Major and the Minor" is one of the first film of Billy Wilder. I have seen four movies of this director and they were excellent, mostly "Some like it hot" with Marilyn Monroe.This movie relate the story of Susan Applegate, tired of working in New York, decide to go back to hometown in Iowa. Despite the fact as she doesn't have enough money for buy his train ticket at full price, she decides to dress like a twelve years old girl for buy a train ticket at half price. Once in the train, she will meet an officer of army who will attach to her.We have a good time when watching this because it's a bit hard to imagine a thirty years old woman dress like a twelve years old girl... and who succeed! I think Billy Wilder is good to find good actors to his films, as to how they play as their physical. It's the case in this film because the principal actress is beautiful. Some scenes are a bit boring and break the rhythm of the movie.

And I mean may. If 2 minutes after the introduction of Diana Lynn's character (Lucy Hill), you do not know how this film is going to end, then you have not been paying attention.If you are one of these people who see the humor in pedophilia, --- and who doesn't, huh? --- then you are going to love this movie. And I am not talking about some phony outrage over a 17-year-old dating his or her 22-year-old teacher (actually quite common in the years following WWII). No siree!!! I am talking about honest-to-goodness, pre-pubescent pedophilia. You're gonna die laughing!Our story starts with our heroine, Susan Applegate (Ginger Rogers) deciding that she has had enough of the decadence of the Big Apple and wants to go home to Iowa. Unfortunately, she had not allowed for a price increase in the train ticket, and so she pretends to be 11 years old in order to get her fare at half price. As in typical leftist Hollywood style. You know, stealing from a big, bad, evil corporation like The Railroad is perfectly acceptable. Note to those of like-minded convoluted thinking: Being a thief is like being pregnant. Either you are, or you are not. There really is no gray area. But I digress.Having boarded the train, our heroine is subjected to the constant harassment of the evil agents of The Railroad (conductors) who are not buying her ruse. And so she ducks into the stateroom of our hero, Major Philip Kirby (Ray Milland) in order to hide out. He buys her story about being 11 years old and agrees to help her out. He even convinces his fiancé, Lucy (Lynn), that he is just helping out some poor little girl who is traveling alone. And when the train is halted by flooded tracks, our heroine is put up by Lucy's family at the Military Academy where our hero teaches.And here is where you aficionados of this type of fare are gonna be rolling on the floor. Throughout the course of the next hour or so, this grown man, a Major in the US Army, lusts after what he thinks is an 11-year-old girl. Sometimes subtle, sometimes not so subtle. Oh, that Billy Wilder. Doesn't he just know how to massage the funny bone?And let's not forget our heroine. Just to make sure that our hero doesn't get all the laughs, she, a grown woman, plays on the sexual frustrations of a bunch of 14-year-old male military cadets. I mean, you just gotta split a gut, dontcha? Of course, in 21st century America, especially if the genders were reversed, the police would be setting up a sting for such a person. But again, I digress.And finally, how does our little saga end? Well, as I said, if you didn't see this coming you haven't been watching the same films as the rest of us. Let's just say that our hero strolls off into the sunset knowing that he can fantasize about sleeping with an 11-year-old for the rest of his life.Some fun, huh? I mean does anyone with half a brain think that this movie could even be made today? I cannot even imagine this film airing on broadcast TV without Congress putting someone in jail. Absolutely unbelievable.And so you say, "Lighten up, Francis! It's just a movie." Yeah, right. And the Inquisition was just a phase. Consider that when Nabokov's Lolita came to film, Lolita had to be at least a biological adult which is why Sue Lyon was chosen. And even then, all of the characters were shown to be deeply flawed, to be scorned for their unacceptable behavior. (No one would even show the 1997 remake until Showtime finally picked it up.) Imagine the Farrelly brothers making a comedy version of Lolita, and you get a feel for The Major and the Minor. Poor taste, indeed.Even if you dismiss the overtones of sexual perversion in this film, consider doing this to two of the most gifted, Oscar-winning actors of yesteryear. Give the beautiful Ginger Rogers a jaundiced face, ugly clothes, a god-awful hairstyle, an annoying name (Su-Su) and an irritating falsetto voice. And then take the sophisticated Ray Milland and turn him into a bumbling, perverted idiot. Sound like something that you would want to watch for an hour and half? Me neither.As the reviewer of another film put it, I am going to give this movie a rating of 2 because I don't want to admit that I watched a film rated 1. Of course, in my case, that means a rating of 2 out of a 1000. If you ever want to watch a Ginger Rogers film again, without thinking about this garbage, then avoid this piece of trash like the plague. You have been warned.