Mr. Wilson perd la tête

William Powell plays both George Carey and Larry Wilson, and Myrna Loy is his wife Kay in this wonderful, deft, entertaining screwball comedy directed by Woody Van Dyke III...."Hey, this is kinda funny. We're not talking about you but a lug named Wilson, and you're both fellas." The words are those of Doc Ryan, George Carey's pal. George, you see, has had amnesia for nine years, and during that time he became Larry Wilson, a pompous businessman....Enter Larry's charming wife Kay. George learns that Kay is eager to divorce Larry because of his miserable, suffocatingly materialistic ways; and when meets Kay, whom he has forgotten, he falls for her and sets out to reclaim her love....The film's defining moment surprises us with its tenderness. Standing in contrast to the film's madcap goings-on, it takes place when George escorts Kay, who thinks he's Larry, to the spot where years before he proposed to her as Larry. The scene precisely captures the distinctive and wonderful chemistry between Powell and Loy, who went on to make ten more pictures together....Like his two most famous characters (Godfrey of MY MAN GODFREY and Nick Charles of THE THIN MAN), Powell's George Carey emerges as a humane individual with the common touch. In fact, he becomes a hero, saving the townsfolk of quaint Haversville from a criminal scam perpetuated by a big city gangster named Duke Sheldon.