My Life with Caroline (1941)
Directed by Lewis Milestone

Film Review

One of the grimmest comedies to which Ronald Colman put his name, My Life with Caroline also marked a low point for director Lewis Milestone, the man who we all remember for his dazzling anti-war film All Quiet on the Western Front (1930).  The film is a sloppy and unimaginative remake of André Berthomieu's French film Le Train pour Venise (1938), which was itself based on Louis Verneuil's popular stage play of the same name.  Unlike Verneuil's play, which is reputed to be a lively farce, Milestone's film is an anaemic talk-a-thon which offers not a single decent laugh but plenty of minutes of mind-numbing tedium.  Anna Lee singularly fails to shine in her first lead Hollywood role, and you wonder what induced an actor of Ronald Colman's standing to lend his name to such an inept, life-sapping enterprise as this.  Plodding and repetitive to the point of nausea, My Life with Caroline has not improved with age and now feels hopelessly dated.

Film Synopsis

Anthony Mason is a successful publisher who, far from being concerned about his wife Caroline's dalliances with other men, positively relishes the challenge of winning her back to him.  Caroline's latest beau is Paco Del Valle, with whom she plans to elope whilst attending a charity ball in Idaho.  Before the lovers can flee, Anthony turns up and recalls an almost identical situation a few years ago, when Caroline had made up her mind to run off with a sculptor, Paul Martindale...