The Major and the Minor

Billy Wilder – 1942 – USA

The typical rap about Billy Wilder’s first film as director – [not counting the French Mauvaise Graine (1934) that he co-directed] – is that he played it safe by making a broad comedy in order to guarantee a success.  I, however, found that The Major and the Minor was filled with all of the bite, bawdiness and romantic irony that we know so well from Wilder’s more famous films.  Ginger Rogers plays a hardened New York cosmetologist, fed up with lecherous men and being broke, who decides to quit the big city and head home by train.  Since she doesn’t even have enough money for a full fare, she disguises herself as a child to qualify for a cheaper ticket.  On the train she meets army officer Ray Milland and accompanies him to a military academy where he teaches and where his fiancée awaits.  She realizes that he may be the man she’s always wanted, while Milland struggles to suppress his strange attraction to a girl he thinks is 12.  It’s a situation that – in true Wilder fashion – gently threatens to become scandalous without ever losing grip on propriety.  Some viewers complain that the 30-ish Rogers couldn’t possibly have fooled anyone into thinking she is 12, but that’s the point of the movie; that the adults never suspect because they are so accustomed to ignoring kids and therefore never give her a hard look.