Anyone coming to Jules Dassin's Two Smart People in expectation of the hard-core noir of his Brute Force, The Naked City, Thieves' Highway or Night and the City will have a surprise in store. Here, Dassin betrays his continental roots in fabricating a light if poignant romance between two con-artists. And though the movie has a noir veneer, it's less suggestive of Fritz Lang or Robert Siodmak than of Ernst Lubitch specifically the Lubitch of Trouble in Paradise, another elegant romance sparked between larcenous lovers.
The pairing here is between Lucille Ball, on the lam from a job she pulled in Hot Springs, Arkansas, and John Hodiak, being escorted back from the west coast to finish a stint at Sing Sing by cop Lloyd Nolan. While trying to sabotage one another's swindles, Ball and Hodiak fall in love, and she joins him on his train journey to that castle on the Hudson. Also in play are half a million in bonds which are tucked away in a fancy cookbook (all ortolans and truffles) that Hodiak, a bit of a gourmet, keeps with him for bedside reading. And the wild card is nasty Elisha Cook, Jr., one of Ball's former partners in crime, who wants the bonds for himself.
Dassin keeps a delicate balance between the intrigue and the romance, but the romance wins out (and who's complaining). Hodiak takes to the lighter, more debonair style with greater conviction than he does the harder-boiled roles he played in Somewhere in the Night and Desert Fury that same year. Ball, in a role that is neither too broad (like The Fuller Brush Girl or Miss Grant Takes Richmond) nor too melodramatic (like The Big Street), delivers a subtle and winning performance and she looks smashing.
For his finale, Dassin whisks us to New Orleans during Mardi Gras, granting Cook a flamboyant exit. It's a gaudy set-piece crowded with costumed revelers that raises the spirits before they grow subdued at the surprisingly bittersweet ending. If Two Smart People can be counted as part of the noir cycle (and it often is), it's possibly its most effervescent title. If not, who cares? It remains an offbeat delight all its own.
