Count Your Blessings is a 1959 romantic comedy-drama film directed by Jean Negulesco.
Grace Allingham (Deborah Kerr) is a rich lady in wartime London who receives a visitor, a French officer, Charles Edouard de Valhubert (Rossano Brazzi). Charles is ostensibly there to deliver a message from Grace's fiancée, but he is immediately enchanted by lovely Grace, and after a single romantic day spent zipping around London, they are married.
Grace and Charles spend three days on a honeymoon, time enough for him to knock her up, before he has to go off to war again. Charles proceeds to spend nine years away, fighting not just in World War II but in France's various colonial wars as its empire fell apart, going right up to the fall of Dien Bien Phu in Vietnam. He does not once come home, not even on leave. Finally, with France's colonial empire unraveling and no convenient wars to keep him away, Charles comes back home to Grace and their son Sigismund, aka "Sigi". Will the two lovers, who spent only three days together nine years ago, be able to build a stable marriage?
Maurice Chevalier plays Charles's uncle, the Duc de St. Cloud.
Tropes:
- Alcohol Hic: Because he is French, and a terrible father, Charles lets nine-year-old Sigi drink wine. Sigi starts hiccuping.
- Ambiguous Syntax: Grace is fuming about Charles dating all those other women while also married to her, but her father Sir Conrad takes it differently.Grace: When I think he was making love to all those other women at the same time!
Sir Conrad: Surely not at the same time. - Bathe Her and Bring Her to Me: Charles basically instructs Grace to do this for herself. He shows up at her mansion and basically demands that she go out with him, saying "Now you may bathe, and put on something lovely."
- Cast Full of Rich People: Grace comes from money, with her father being a knight who has a mansion in the fancy Mayfair district of London. But Charles comes from even more money, having homes all over France, including a home in Paris, another home in Paris that is so lavish it's been turned into a museum, and a vineyard, and a goddamn castle. Also, he's a marquis and will eventually be a duke.
- Divorce Is Temporary: Grace and Charles get divorced and she even starts dating her old boyfriend Hugh again. Naturally she and Charles get back together at the end.
- Dramatic Irony: Grace, having gone to the one family home that is now a museum, says to the Duc that "I'm going to surprise Charles" with her new knowledge of family history. Meanwhile the Duc is trying to get her out of there, as he has just spotted Charles with a woman upstairs.
- Dramatic Sit-Down: Actually played for comedy, as Charles finds out that the ugly rug that he recoiled from is actually the family carpet that Grace has been weaving for nine years. She flips out when she sees his reaction.
- English Rose: Deborah Kerr was pretty much the iconic English Rose for most of her career, and it's a Discussed Trope in this movie, when Charles sees Grace for the first time and immediately starts putting on the charm.Charles: I love English girls. They're like spring flowers, tossed in a basket.
- A Foggy Day in London Town: It's foggy when Grace and her father and Nanny are waiting outside for Charles, and when Charles is late for his own wedding he blames it on the London fog. (In fact, he was getting orders to ship out in three days.)
- Fourth-Date Marriage: The entire premise involves a wartime wedding after Grace and Charles knew each other only three days, only for them to be immediately separated by years.
- I Never Got Any Letters: Charles and Grace find out at the end that Sigi was intercepting and burning the letters Charles was sending to Grace, begging for a reconciliation. Sigi likes his parents ring divorced, since each of them spoil him and buy him fancy toys.
- "London, England" Syndrome: Naturally the credits play over a static shot of Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament. The France parts of the movie work in shots of the Arc de Triomphe and a closing shot of the Eiffel Tower.
- Mistaken for Cheating: Grace and Charles's marriage finally ruptures when Grace, who has grudgingly accepted that Charles can keep a mistress, proceeds to catch him with a second woman in one of the family mansions. Actually the second woman is his secretary and she was taking letters. (Of course the fact that Charles definitely is cheating with Albertine subverts this trope.)
- The Mistress: Charles has a smoking hot girlfriend, Albertine, that he keeps in a fancy house. The Duc tells Grace that she should let her husband have a mistress, because he's French. Amazingly, she eventually agrees.
- "Pan Up to the Sky" Ending: After Grace and Charles kiss in the crowd, the camera pans up to a shot of the sky and the Eiffel Tower.
- Romantic False Lead: Hugh is a fop and Upper-Class Twit who has the weird verbal tic of saying "Goodo!" all the time. He is no competition for handsome Charles.
- Second-Face Smoke: An argument about all the girlfriends Charles had during his time away leads Grace to light up a Cigarette of Anxiety and blow smoke in his face.
- Shower Scene: Some 1959 Fanservice shows Grace taking a shower with nothing but a plastic curtain between her and the camera.
- Time-Passes Montage: A montage showing Grace weaving a family carpet that grows longer and longer, while sometimes complaining about Charles never coming home even on leave, over what turns out to be nine years.
- Translation Convention: The Duc and his nephew Charles choose to speak French to each other while dining in a Paris restaurant, as do the French political radicals seen in a public square at the end of the movie.
- Writers Cannot Do Math: The chronology of the plot doesn't make any sense. The opening shot of searchlights and barrage balloons and anti-aircraft fire implies 1940. When Charles meets Grace for the first time he says her fiancé Hugh is involved with some unpleasantness regarding "the Afrika Korps", which would date Charles and Grace's whirlwind romance to 1942-43. Grace is then shown to be visibly pregnant in 1944, as confirmed by the date on her quilt. Charles then doesn't get home until at least ten years after that, since there are multiple references to him being at the siege of Dien Bien Phu, which was in 1954. But there are specific references in the story to Charles and Grace being apart for only nine years.
