Watch The Lady Is Willing For Free

Simply A Masterpiece

Good story, Not enough for a whole film

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

for the self irony of Dietrich performance. for the nice story and air of far age of cinema. for inspired cast. and, sure, for the respect for recipes of romantic comedy. it is not a link from chain of fashion of art. few sparkles, a seductive Dietrich, mixture of love balloons and fine humor, the dramatic small slice and the touching solutions to create identity in a ocean of clones, all is good reason to see it and, in a measure or other, to love it. because it is almost magic like many films from that period. because the acting is smart and the game of nuances not uninspired. because, after war of blockbusters, this film has the gift to be comfortable. and for occasion to travel in time. and discover than life is beautiful.

Why does she blink all the time? The shy ingénue type? at forty? Preposterous. After a while it gets to be quite annoying. Is that the added touch to round up a dumb character? whatever, it's very difficult to accept Marlene Dietrich in such a disguise.She wears huge mink coats, shiny evening gowns (even in her kitchen and in the hospital scene) a la Cher (Yes, I know, Cher came later, but you know what I mean). Even in her more dramatic scenes she grabs that mink coat and doesn't let go, crying and all (It could have been a Carol Burnett sketch).I can only think that in those years people were extremely naive and took all these unreal props as part of movie life, so removed from their humble, dreary little lives and made it so enchanting to go home after the movie and dream while reading Photoplay or whatever movie magazine was issued back then.The movie is entertaining to a point but after a while you just want to give it up and go, do something else. All the situations are so outrageously phony that if you pretend to analyze them you'll stop watching this movie after the very first scene is completed.Froth to the nth degree.

Whatever faults THE LADY IS WILLING has can be traced immediately to the script. Despite this, Mitchel Leisen's direction guides MARLENE DIETRICH and FRED MacMURRAY through their paces and gets some very good performances from both of them. Marlene, in particular, is surprisingly effective playing a naive, bossy, and very "dumb" Broadway actress who casually walks off with a baby simply because it's cute and she can afford to take care of it.Complications arise, of course, when it's discovered that she's the woman in the screwy hat who took the child away from the scene of an accident. MacMurray is the handsome doctor she calls when she needs help in supervising the child and from then on the story veers between comedy, romance and even drama toward the end.Dietrich is lovingly photographed, perfectly lit by an astute cameraman no matter what the situation is and glamorously gowned throughout. MacMurray is an old hand at screwball comedy and is thoroughly adept at handling his bumbling chores with his usual expertise.A couple of good-natured twins were used for all of the baby's scenes and Dietrich seems to really care about how she interacts with the infant. It's an unusual role for her and she demonstrates an ability to toss off screwball dialog with the best of them.This sort of fluff is given above average handling by Leisen and his stars, although the material itself is decidedly below par screwball comedy that turns maudlin toward the end.

This is a strange film due to its bizarro plot as well as its odd casting of Marlene Dietrich in, of all things, a screwball comedy!! It's actually hard to think of an actress of the day LESS suited for such a film, as her glamorous persona seemed out of place here.The film begins with a famous stage actress (Dietrich) coming home with a baby she just 'picked up' on the way home!! She is very blasé about it and eventually gets around to telling her housekeeping staff and assistant how she came upon the child. It seems that a child had been abandoned and a policeman had asked her, a passerby, to hold the baby for a moment. However, she was so captivated by it that she couldn't stand the idea of it going to an orphanage--so she just took it home and didn't bother telling anyone!! This sort of nuttiness is apparently the norm for Dietrich's character. She apparently has had a string of quickie marriages, spends far more than she earns and seems to have the motherly instincts of a 2 year-old. And, speaking of 2 year-olds, daffy Marlene calls the doctor (Fred MacMurray) for no reason in particular. When he asks how old the child is, she says "about 2 years-old"--and kid is clearly around 6-8 months old! Now HOW daffy Marlene's character acts would have been a stretch for any actress. She seemed frivolous and stupid even compared to the one played by Katherine Hepburn in "Bringing Up Baby"!!! So, from the outset, the writing really was a let-down for Dietrich. And having the romance eventually occur between the very level-headed baby-hating doctor (MacMurray) and her made zero sense! Overall, the film seems to be the epitome of the word 'contrived'. While there are lots of good moments and the germ of a good story here, the whole thing just never gels--it just doesn't ring true or work. It also doesn't help that the film goes from wacky to a bit maudlin and deadly serious late in the film! While the film is enjoyable if you turn off your brain, you really, really need to keep that brain in neutral throughout to enjoy the movie.