A Gulf Demanding a Bridge

A grown woman poses as a twelve year old to get cheaper train fare and winds up in a military officer's cabin in 1942's The Major and the Minor. This was the first American film directed by Billy Wilder and he hit the ground running with one of the cleverest and most engaging comedies of all time.

Ginger Rogers plays the minor, Susan "Su-Su" Applegate, and Ray Milland is the major, Major Philip Kirby. What innocent days the 1940s were when a guy like him thinks it no more than an amusing lark to invite a 12 year old girl he just met to sleep in his cabin on the trip from New York to Iowa. I was surprised, though, how believable Ginger Rogers, who was 31 at the time, was as a twelve year old. The only one she doesn't fool is Lucy (Diana Lynn), the twelve year old sister of Philip's fiancee, but the two immediately become comrades.

It's a funny and insightful moment when Susan uses cutesy lingo to inquire whether Lucy's goldfish would die and Lucy cuts her off, telling her to "drop the baby talk." Susan's able to fool the adults because she gives them exactly what adults expect of a twelve year-old; guileless innocence. Naturally, Lucy knows better. Lucy has a whole chemical lab set up to open her sister's mail without detection. She has cigarettes hidden under her couch, which she politely shares with Susan. Susan's whole mission of deception aligns perfectly with Lucy's normal routine. That's one of the marks of great comedy, or great art; to show you something strange and then cause you to realise it's perfectly normal at the same time.

Of course, romance must somehow blossom between Susan and Philip. The movie's almost entirely from Susan's perspective and it's not hard to see why she would fall for the kind-hearted guy, though the movie's a little awkward at explaining how he might eventually see her as a woman. Before that, though, Susan has to contend with all the cadets at the academy who, despite their youth, are no more angels than Lucy or Susan.

The Major and the Minor is available on The Criterion Channel in their Love in Disguise playlist.