Help me figure out what movie I'm thinking of.

June 28, 2006 2:06 PM

Help me figure out what movie I'm thinking of.

I'm pretty iffy on all the details, so bear with me. It takes place in an apartment complex in California (the kind with an outside courtyard and more or less seperate apartments). All the shots I remember were either in an apartment, or just outside in the complex. I thought it starred Jimmy Stewart, but I just spent a long while on IMDB and I couldn’t find it. I believe it was in Black and White, but it could have been color. The central theme has to do with a girl living with the main male character without being married, or maybe just about her living alone and not being married. There is a scene where the main male character brings home a bottle of tequila and a book of poems. I believe the poems were by e.e. cummings. He reads one to her. I'm pretty sure they decide to get married by the end of the film.

I just asked a couple of pros and they couldn't help me out. Did I dream this?

Also, I'm interested in exactly what poem he reads.

posted by miniape to media & arts (13 comments total)

Rear Window ?
posted by Justin Case at 2:10 PM on June 28, 2006

No, this is sort of a lighthearted love story.
posted by miniape at 2:14 PM on June 28, 2006

I have no idea about your movie. But, if it is from e.e. cummings, the following poem by him could be it (if not, hope you enjoy it anyway):

somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond

somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
any experience,your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look will easily unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose

or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully ,suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;
nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility:whose texture
compels me with the color of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens;only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands
posted by eebs at 2:22 PM on June 28, 2006

This sounds really familiar to me too. I'm curious to learn the title.
posted by vkxmai at 2:22 PM on June 28, 2006

If I'm not mistaken, the above Cummings poem was featured in Hannah and Her Sisters.
posted by Gilbert at 2:26 PM on June 28, 2006

Yeah, one of the pros mentioned above thought I was mixing up two movies, one them being Hannah. Definitely not though. I believe the poem in the movie had something to do with a Persian king. I may be just giving you wrong info now.
posted by miniape at 2:30 PM on June 28, 2006

Gilbert is right, but of course Hannah and Her Sisters doesn't fit the rest of the criteria. The cummings poem "i carry your heart with me" featured prominently in the recent movie In Her Shoes, but that doesn't seem very likely, either.
posted by cerebus19 at 2:31 PM on June 28, 2006

Almost sounds like In a Lonely Place except for the "lighthearted love story" part.
posted by starman at 2:45 PM on June 28, 2006

I don't suppose it could be Come Live with Me? I've not seen the movie, but it:

1. Stars Jimmy Stewart;
2. Is a love story;
3. Has a title taken from a poem (albeit one by Christopher Marlowe).
posted by cerebus19 at 2:49 PM on June 28, 2006

Come Live with Me is my front runner. Can anyone else provide info on it and say if it tallies to my notes above?
posted by miniape at 3:04 PM on June 28, 2006

The Seven Year Itch?
posted by jdroth at 4:02 PM on June 28, 2006

sounds right to me:

Come Live With Me (1941)

A beautiful foreigner (Hedy Lamarr), who's also an illegal alien, is being "kept" by a rich married publisher (Ian Hunter), who can't or won't get a divorce from his wife (Verree Teasdale) in order to marry her and keep her in the country. So, when she meets a struggling author (James Stewart) who'll do just about anything to survive, they agree upon a platonic relationship & marriage in which Lamarr satisfies only Stewart's financial needs. An arrangement he, of course, later comes to regret and then hopes to alter. Stewart's character writes a story about his arrangement which he markets to publishers and, naturally, the publisher's wife reads it, loves it, and recommends it to her husband. Even though Stewart's character tells Hunter's that his story is fiction, the race is now on - can Hunter dump his wife before Stewart can win Lamarr? This charming Clarence Brown produced & directed romantic comedy (story by Virginia Van Upp, screenplay by Patterson McNutt) ends at the farm of "Stewart's" Grandma (Adeline De Walt Reynolds) with a scene reminiscent of the "Walls of Jericho" from It Happened One Night (1934). Barton MacLane plays the immigration official who threatens Lamarr with deportation. Donald Meek also appears.

posted by ab3 at 5:14 PM on June 28, 2006

This blog post mentions that, in Come Live with Me, "[i]n the end Stewart recites some poetry to Lamarr and she falls for him..."
posted by cerebus19 at 6:09 PM on June 28, 2006