WONDER MAN (1945) *** I'm not saying that Danny Kaye was a versatile actor, I'm saying that he could do a lot of wonderful things on screen. Some of them so brilliant that they couldn't possibly be defined outside the almost supernatural expanse that the rest of us can only describe as genius. Danny's moments are invariably funny and propelled by a nature so good and pure that some moments seem more about angels than anything else. Which works particularly well in a film where Danny is playing two twins, one pretending to be the dead one, especially when the dead one possesses him. This all could have taken on a darker in hue in lesser hands. Instead it's a film where Virginia Mayo can be a comfortable librarian love interest, where Danny can deliver his stand-up routines whilst being thrust high upon the shoulders of Shakespeareans, and where Brooklyn need expend no effort in attaining its natural place at the center of the cosmos. I probably could have done without Vera-Ellen's dancing and the wisdom of The Goldwyn Girls, but I can't think of any reason that the French (and situational existentialists everywhere) shouldn't study this in minute detail towards attaining any sense of a greater picture surrounding us all. I mean aren't we all standing in the middle of a great stage, really, blurting necessities from beyond our proffered lines?
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