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1936 film by Raoul Walsh From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Big Brown Eyes is a 1936 American romantic comedy crime film directed by Raoul Walsh and starring Cary Grant, Joan Bennett and Walter Pidgeon.[2] It was produced by Walter Wanger and distributed by Paramount Pictures.
Big Brown Eyes | |
---|---|
Directed by | Raoul Walsh |
Screenplay by | Bert Hanlon Raoul Walsh |
Based on | "Hahsit Babe" "Big Brown Eyes" 1935 Liberty magazine stories by James Edward Grant |
Produced by | Walter Wanger |
Starring | Cary Grant Joan Bennett Walter Pidgeon |
Cinematography | George T. Clemens |
Edited by | Robert L. Simpson |
Music by | Gerard Carbonara |
Production company | |
Distributed by | Paramount Pictures |
Release date |
|
Running time | 77 minutes |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Budget | $289,696[1] |
Box office | $359,009[1] |
Police officer Danny Barr is chasing jewel robbers. His girlfriend, Eve Fallon, is initially working as a manicurist, but quickly takes a job as a reporter assisting in the effort against the jewel thieves. Fallon and Barr become disgusted when one jewel gang member is acquitted after killing a baby in Central Park, and both leave their jobs. Soon thereafter, Fallon gets a lucky break while giving a manicure and the case is solved.
The film recorded a loss of $14,645.[1] Critics have regarded it as "disposable"[3] and "inconsequential"[4] with "shoddy writing and generally uninspired performances."[5]
Writing for The Spectator in 1936, Graham Greene gave the film a positive review, characterizing it as "a fast well-directed and quite unsentimental gangster film, pleasantly free from emotion".[6]
More recent writers have been kinder to the film. Grant biographer Scott Eyman called it an "unheralded gem in Grant's catalogue, a snappy comedy-drama [...] a cheerfully disreputable pre-Code film unaccountably made after the Code, with speedy cross-talk that prefigures His Girl Friday."[7] Writing for The New Yorker, Richard Brody hailed the film's "cocksure grifters and workaday wiseacres who dish out sharp-edged patter—none more than Grant and Bennett, whose gibing often resembles quasi-Beckettian doubletalk. Here, Grant offers early flashes of the brash, suave, and intricate antics on which his enduring comedic persona is based."[8]
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