Here Comes Mr Jordan

Film Review by Ross McIndoe | 27 Jun 2016
Film title: Here Comes Mr Jordan
Director: Alexander Hall
Starring: Claude Rains, Robert Montgomery, James Gleason
Release date: 20 Jun
Certificate: U

Charming body-swap comedy Here Comes Mr Jordan gets the Criterion Collection treatment

Body-swap comedies are more or less a subgenre in themselves nowadays and the premise is so well established that the audience can just jump right in. Children become parents, look-alikes trade lives, young black men become old white dudes, Rob Schneider becomes a 'Hot Chick' and everybody just goes with it. Naturally it wasn’t always so and Criterion’s re-release of 1941’s Here Comes Mr Jordan has the time capsule effect of letting us see how the story was told before it was so well worn.

There’s something really charming in the way it labours the explanations of how Brooklyn boxer Joe Pendleton (Robert Montgomery) comes to find himself occupying the body of a crooked millionaire, walking the audience slowly and repeatedly through the rules of the game. Beyond that, there’s just something hugely charming about the film as a whole – revolving around a comic kind of divine intervention, its elegant, understated style and bumbling hero give it a similar feel to the iconic heart-warmer that would follow it a few years later, It’s a Wonderful Life.

It has the goofy glamour of an era when characters in love could only embrace standing up, brought to life by big, broad performances from Montgomery, James Gleason and Edward Horton. And then there’s Claude Rains, gliding through the film with ethereal composure that sells the whole 'celestial being' thing without a special effect in sight.

Extras

As well as inspiring a pretty constant stream of sequels and remakes in the decades to follow, Alexander Hall’s film had a massive impact at the time in a myriad of ways, which the essays and interviews included in the new release do a great job of exploring. A film that's likeable in an immediate and unthinking way turns out to be well worth thinking about afterwards too.  


Released on Blu-ray and DVD by Criterion Collection