Honeymoon in Bali (1939)

just watch it!

Highly Overrated But Still Good

Brilliant and touching

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

Certainly in the 1930's, there were enough lady doctors, lawyers and businessmen, even film directors, and when the women go beyond being housewives, secretaries and chorus girls, the tides of the battle of the sexes certainly turn. Madeline Carroll is the vice president of a fashion company with her own independent ideas of about what a woman with a career should be like. She gets her fortune told, and tempting fate, takes that turn down the street she normally wouldn't go down, changing her life forever. Encountering macho Fred MacMurray in a ship shop (looking ship shape), she begins to learn a thing or two about what the average man really wants, and it isn't some hard-boiled career woman who works until 2:00 in the morning getting the advertising campaign right. Surrounded by like people hasn't moved her away from this way of thinking, so MacMurray's masculine attitudes are surprisingly refreshing to her."A woman carries around two things with her", old pal Helen Broderick says, adding "A first aide kit and a knife". Certainly, the acerbic Broderick knows her sex, being an old maid author who once looked for love but has ended up playing solitaire. When Carroll insults her single life at a dinner party attended by MacMurray and crooner Allan Jones, Broderick is truly hurt, storming out. But as comfortable as an old slipper, you know Broderick will be back, and apologies will be accepted. In the meantime, it is up to Carroll to learn about what she really wants, and this being pre-wartime Hollywood, it's pretty obvious that the macho man will win and the little wifey to be will give up her career and put on that apron before heading to where a woman of this era belongs: into the kitchen.Starting off like many of the screwball comedies of this time, this moves slowly into a dramatic second half which truly changes the structure of the film and the impact it makes. MacMurray's character lives in Bali and pops up in New York every so often for thrills and a change of pace. He encounters an old admirer (Osa Massen), takes in a little girl (Carolyn Lee) and makes it clear that he's determined to bring Carroll down to earth. But it's not without struggles between both of them, with Jones willing to kow-tow to Carroll's whims to marry but live alone, and Massen making it clear that she's determined to land MacMurray any way it takes.Massen's character becomes instantly unlikable, almost like her obnoxious, smug vixen from "A Woman's Face", showing a delight in her cruelty. As for Lee, perhaps it is her youth and inexperienced acting, but a lot of her dialog is very difficult to understand. By the time of the film "Virginia" (with almost the same cast) two years later, she was much more skilled and certainly less cloying. Her most touching moment here is when Carroll teaches her how to pray and is greatly touched by what Lee asks God for.The two stars do their best to make the split personality structure work, but they are only fairly successful in doing so. Allan Jones gets to sing a few songs, showing a singing telegram delivery boy how to do it, and Akim Tamiroff is very funny in his opening and closing sequence as a window washer working in both rain and snow storms peaking in on the luscious Carroll. However, it is Helen Broderick who wins acting honors here, being both funny and human, and reminding the audience that she was dropping quips long before Eve Arden came along to steal her territory. For some reason, the film was re-titled "My Love For Yours" for a re-issue which is listed on T.V. and DVD prints, the original title card presumably lost.

Can't you see them on Bali when the war in the Pacific heats up? Does our hero join the US military and leave, or stay on Bali to help in the defense? Do his wife and little girl flee successfully or get captured? There would be the big reunion scene where he is injured but still the same fellow no matter what the war has done to him externally. I can hardly watch a Pacific island movie in that era without picturing gunships and islands soon to be overrun by soldiers.I liked the little girl. Her not being able to sing the ditty right was a cute answer to Shirley Temple's extreme acumen. But kids in movies are a matter of taste.The part about a woman without a husband and child being like someone missing an arm was grim and insulting to her friend who was single and childless. What the priest and the window washer said, though, was quite good. In the Forties the message would be much more in favor of strong independent women, but during the war, movies didn't want to discourage Rosie the Riveter from performing her duties.On the whole I'd have to say some of it was good, some awful, and all of it predictable. The French woman and the window washer were the only characters I found interesting. What a plot device! Laying the movie out in the first few minutes with a psychic reading. Talk about a spoiler! And the little girl was just sort of thrown into the storyline without any preparation or foundation for her being there except as a way to show that a real woman is emotional and motherly. Of course women and men actually come in many variations. I think the movie tried to engage in a discussion of male and female roles in society and failed miserably because it was the same old story of a bossy repressed woman dominated by a strong unrepressed man who takes her from her career and turns her into a wife and mother, which is her happy ending. It makes me long for His Gal Friday, out the next year in 1940.

I have just finished watching the DVD Version of "Honeymoon In Bali" and must say that it is really good. The DVD Version was released by Passion Productions. Fred MacMurray and Madeleine Carroll, was just wonderful. anyone wishing a little romance in their lives should really enjoy this movie.

Wow! I picked this up today from the $4.99 DVD bin at K-Mart. What a pleasant surprise. It's your typical romantic story of boy meets girl, boy looses girl, ect., but there are some very fine moments.The film opens with Madeline Carroll having her fortune told. It's an outrageous fortune, but as the story unfolds we see it coming true to life. Fred MacMurray is great in this film. Don't get me wrong, it doesn't compare to his role in 'The Apartment,' but I was shocked when I realized that this film was made in 1939.The open and candid talk of one of the characters attempted suicides (done in a VERY light-hearted way), makes me wonder if this film was passed by the Production Code.