The first half of That Certain Feeling is a gauzy, undramatic look at two people who pretty much just fall in love at first sight. The second half is the story of two people who love each other trying to forge their path in a world of harsher reality than either of them expected, filled with wonderful moments and touching scenes. It really is a tale of two halves with the first feeling like competent but unremarkable silent filmmaking and the second half feeling like highly accomplished and perceptive silent filmmaking. Freed from working under Harry Langdon and newly hired by Harry Cohn at Columbia, Frank Capra seemed to be showing that he was already capable of much more than managing a comedian's pratfalls.
Molly (Viola Dana) is a poor widow with two children who dreams of marrying a millionaire. At the same time, Andy B. Charles Jr. (Ralph Graves), son of the restaurant magnate A. B. Charles Sr. (Burr McIntosh) who owns the ABC Restaurant chain, is living large on his father's dime and testing his patience for his wayward ways. Leaving her job one day of working at a cigar counter in a department story, Molly accidentally runs into Andy, discovers he's a millionaire in an amusing bit of business dealing with an open-top bus and Andy's car, and they are instantly smitten with each other, having a night out and quickly marrying.
Now, this business takes the first half of the film, and it's pretty typically lightly amusing but never all that engaging. There's no dramatic tension behind anything, just a rich guy and a poor girl instantly falling for each other with the smallest of obstacles quickly overcome. Some of those obstacles are amusing (there's some business with a waiter that Andy tries to keep standing up to hide he and Molly kissing by manipulating the server with a cane), but it's ultimately just light and frothy entertainment without much bite or weight for about forty minutes (depending on the speed of the presentation, mine was slowed down).
The second half is far better, though, and I dare to call it kind of great. It all starts with Senior cutting Junior off completely because he's convinced that Molly is just a gold digger out for Junior's money. She tries to leave him as a favor to Junior, but Junior won't have it. They end up determined to make a life together, no matter how they have to manage it. See? There's dramatic stakes around this. They have a real obstacle, Senior's insistence on keeping them apart or at least away from his money, and they have to overcome their own poverty to build a life together. It's not groundbreaking storytelling, or anything, but it is solidly built storytelling.
After some amusing business around Andy being completely unsuited for physical labor, he comes up with the idea of selling boxed lunches to his fellow workers, directly competing with his father's business. Molly ends up running it, and we get our first full dramatization of the American Dream from Frank Capra. It's all about a vision and hard work, providing a better product at a better price than your competitor and succeeding because of the combination of it all (and not one scene of filling out a business license for some reason). It's satisfying to watch, but it gets even better when Senior, trying to figure out why his thinly sliced ham restaurant business is in the opening stages of failing, shows up at the little sandwich factory.
We get bits of farce as Senior sees Junior but doesn't know that Molly is Junior's wife, thinking that Junior is just the place's bookkeeper, all while Junior helps Molly with negotiations from behind her glass door, playing with the conventions of silent cinema as Junior tries to get himself understood by his wife in assorted ways. I think my favorite is when he covers the words on boxes to send specific messages.
It's kind of amazing how satisfying the second half of That Certain Thing really is as the young couple triumph through their own gumption. Performances are all solid with Graves pretty much just charming his way through the film and Dana having the larger gamut of emotions to carry, which she handles well.
This Frank Capra character...I think he may go places in the movie business. If only he can get the first half of his next film to work better.
