Ti amo ancora

When the movie going public demands you back 14 times you know that something is being done right by both the studio and the players involved.

William Powell and Myrna Loy hit a real career high point in this film with a rather original plot gimmick. The amnesia gimmick is stood on its head in this film.

Powell and Loy are married and he's on a business trip involving an ocean voyage. Powell is something of a stuffed shirt when we meet him on the ship. When a drunken Frank McHugh falls overboard, Powell dives in to rescue him and in the process gets himself knocked out.

When he comes to, like in Random Harvest, he discovers his former identity which is that of a confidence man and as it turns out McHugh also is a full time grifter.

Unlike Ronald Colman who spent the whole of Random Harvest searching for his lost years, Powell has his identity there. Returning to his town with his new found friend McHugh, he finds wife Loy together with the fact he's a person of some means. But he also finds out that Loy was planning to get rid of him.

Powell together with McHugh and former associate Edmund Lowe try to work an elaborate con game on the town. At the same time Powell is falling for the woman he married and embarks on a campaign to win her back. Those two agenda items come into conflict.

Bill and Myrna are at their best in I Love You Again. Two highlight scenes for me are Powell's cooing courtship of Loy and his trip through the woods in his Boy Ranger uniform with his Boy Ranger troop. This must have been the same outfit that Jimmy Stewart was trying to get a summer camp for in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. The goings on are similar to what Powell went through fishing in Libeled Lady.

I Love You Again is movie comedy at its very best. Don't miss it if TCM runs it again.