People are voting emotionally.

This is a tender, generous movie that likes its characters and presents them as real people, full of flaws and strengths.

Very interesting film. Was caught on the premise when seeing the trailer but unsure as to what the outcome would be for the showing. As it turns out, it was a very good film.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

In Billy Wilder's first American comedy he secured the stage and his basis for the rest of his days in America. His films were always good, and the remarkable thing is that he never repeated himself - every film he made is thoroughly original, and already in his first hit he ventured on some very bold challenges to spice his audience with which proved more than successful. The script is ingenious, and although you know from the start that they will win each other in the end there are many troublesome question marks on the way, and the great issue is how on earth they will manage themselves out of this mess of masquerade and intrigue. Ginger Rogers was always a superb comedienne, and Ray Milland was never better than in the beginning - he later turned to more and more doubtful characters, from "The Lost Weekend" and on, but here he is still sparkling.The triumph though is the script, so eloquent, intelligent and ingenious, and every detail, although the intrigue many times turns into precarious and dangerous ground, is perfect. There is even some trying suspense, as Ginger at the telephone while the whole army is after her.Great entertainment on level with the best screwball comedies, and yet this one is rather overlooked and unknown.

The Major and the Minor is the film that me fall in love with Ginger Rogers, turning me into the obsessive fan I am now. Miss Rogers is Susan "Susu" Applegate, who transforms her 30 year old body into that of a 12 year old and does so completely convincingly and in my view gives the finest performance of her career. I question how many actresses would have the ability to do such a feat. Being a super fan I would say that she should have won an Oscar for this acting marvel but I doubt the Academy would pay much attention to a weird little irrational comedy like this. Oh yes, weird, that is our key word here. If the premise of a 30 year old disguise as a 12 year old in order to get half fare on a train ticket doesn't have you raising an eyebrow then how about throwing her into a military academy with 300 male pre teen cadets. The whole family can enjoy The Major and the Minor, the kids can enjoy the smart alecky humor and the adults can enjoy the sexual innuendo....centered around children. That's one of the things that makes this movie great, it's so wrong on many levels (yet feels so right, or something like that) but contains that kind of innocence and naivety that only classic Hollywood can pull off. The British Board of Film Classification gives the film a current rating of "U" with the description, "contains very mild sex references", although I believe that's a gross understatement. Imagine if Lolita was a screwball comedy, you would have a result somewhere along the lines of The Major and the Minor.Ray Milland is an excellent leading man, well a leading man to a character whom he thinks is a child (yes this movie becomes more wrong the further I analyse it). I wonder how must have felt delivering such lines as "You like boys Susu?, 300 of them, all they're all yours". The ending of The Major and the Minor itself is disturbing on a number of levels. When Major Kirby discovers Susu is actually an adult and they presumably now fall in love as seen in the final scene, is he going to fantasize that he's going out with the 12 year old Susu? My other favourite cast member here is Diana Lynn as an intellectual child planning to become a scientist. This kid is so bad ass, I'm actually quote jealous of her. Normally kids in movies tend to get on my nerves, but not when they're able to outwit the adults, as seen here.The Major and the Minor was Billy Wilder's American directorial debut and already he has made the first in a long line of masterpieces. Exploring his films (including those he has written) I feel has been a journey for me through the annals of classic Hollywood and for helping to shape my sense of humour. The Major and the Minor marks another milestone in that journey.

"The Major and the Minor" was the first American film directed by Billy Wilder, although contrary to what is sometimes stated it was not his directorial debut. (That was the French film "Mauvaise Graine" from eight years earlier). A young woman named Susan Applegate, travelling by train from New York City to her home in Iowa, discovers she has only enough money to cover a child's fare, so disguises herself as an eleven-year-old girl- "twelve next week"- and renaming herself Su-Su. On board the train she meets Major Philip Kirby, an instructor at a military academy, and when the train is delayed by flooding on the tracks Major Kirby invites Susan, whom he believes to be a young child, to stay at the school until her parents can fetch her.The film was made in 1942, shortly after America's entry into the war, but the action takes place the previous year, shortly before it, and there is a definite patriotic subtext. Philip believes that war is coming, and is anxious to be posted overseas where he will have a greater opportunity of serving his country in an active role. His scheming fiancée Pamela, however, is determined to keep him at the academy, well away from the front line. Philip, however, has an ally in Pamela's younger sister Lucy, who dislikes her sister and is determined to thwart her machinations, and who recruits Susan as an ally in her cause.Although the film was ignored at the award ceremonies- it was the only one of Wilder's Hollywood films not to be nominated for a single Oscar or Golden Globe until "Kiss Me, Stupid" in 1964- it was well-received by the critics at the time. Variety, for example, called it a "sparkling and effervescing piece of farce-comedy", and, to judge from the reviews on this board, it would still seem to have its admirers today. What struck me about it, however, was how odd it looks from a twenty-first century perspective. Part of the problem is that the idea of Ginger Rogers successfully disguising herself as a child is an implausible one. The only person who sees through Susan's disguise is Lucy, played by Diana Lynn as that stock comic figure, the obnoxiously knowing child with a middle-aged and formidably intellectual head on young shoulders. Everyone else is completely taken in. This was an idea which really needed an actress considerably younger than the 31-year-old Rogers. Veronica Lake, famously petite and only 19 at the time, could perhaps have pulled it off, but the studio doubtless wanted a more established star.Even weirder is the idea of a man falling in love with an eleven-year-old girl, or at least with a girl whom he believes to be eleven years old, but that is precisely what Philip does. As soon as he realises that Susan is an adult he proposes marriage to her, his engagement to Pamela having been broken off by this stage. Philip is not the only one to succumb to Su-Su's charms, as several of the cadets at the academy, boys in their early teens, also take a shine to her. There is a running joke about the boys using an explanation of German tactics during the invasion of France as a pretext for putting their arms around her. One wonders how Wilder managed to get this sort of thing past the Hays Office at a time when thirteen-year-old boys were generally portrayed in the cinema as mischievous children rather than budding Lotharios.The film has some good qualities. The role of Philip Kirby was originally written with Cary Grant, that master of screwball comedy, in mind, and there are some witty lines which one could just imagine Grant enunciating. Possibly the best-known is "Why don't you get out of that wet coat and into a dry martini?" Ray Milland, who would later collaborate with Wilder on "The Long Weekend", is perfectly good in the role, although I thought Grant might have been better. There are also some amusing scenes such as the one where Susan imitates Pamela in a telephone call in order to get Philip transferred to the post he wants. (Ginger Rogers obviously had some talent as a mimic). The fundamental weirdness of the film's central concept, however, means that today it is difficult to take it altogether seriously or to find it altogether likable. Although there is a feeling in some quarters that Wilder could do no wrong, "The Major and the Minor" does not compare with his really great films such as "Double Indemnity", "Sunset Boulevard", "Sabrina" or "Some Like It Hot". 5/10

Paramount Pictures finally gave Billy Wilder a chance to direct his own material with The Major And The Minor. This rather interesting comedy depends a great deal not on just Wilder's writing and directing, but on the considerable comedy talents of Ginger Rogers to put it over. It's not easy for an actress in the full flower of maturity to pretend to be an adolescent, but Rogers was certainly up to the task.Rogers plays Susan Applegate from Stevenson, Iowa who has had just about enough of New York. After trying several professions and making no headway in any of them, she's ready to cash it in and go back to Stevenson, maybe marry a local guy there. But cash is the problem when she comes up just short of the fare from New York to Stevenson. What to do, but pretend she's a child and travel for half fare.A rather interesting set of circumstances has her stopping off as a guest of Ray Milland whom she has 'fooled' into thinking she is only an early teen. That doesn't sit well with Milland's fiancée Rita Johnson, a real ice princess who suspects something's up. And Johnson's sister Diana Lynn knows there is, but doesn't care. Milland is an instructor at a boy's military school and the sight of his female guest sends the cadets into hormonal overdrive. Milland's feeling a bit antsy around Rogers though he can't quite figure out why.Wilder showed that even in his first film he was a master at slipping stuff by the censors. In a recent biography of Billy Wilder that was more important on this film than most because the subject matter was weaving dangerously close to pedophilia. Paramount was disposed to let Wilder have this project especially after another of their writers a couple of years earlier showed he had the directing chops. But Preston Sturges was given a tryout in the studio's B picture unit with The Great McGinty. The Major And The Minor was an A film all the way because Wilder was able to sell Ginger Rogers on the story. He also brought the film only slightly over budget which definitely insured he would have a directorial career at Paramount.Robert Benchley is also in the film as a lecherous old goat who is the one who finally sends Rogers packing to Iowa after putting the moves on her while she is trying the profession of masseuse. Wouldn't you know it, he turns out to be the father of a chip off the old block in the person of Cadet Frankie Thomas. Benchley's scenes in the film are precious indeed.The Major And The Minor still holds up very well after over 60 years, no doubt because of the risqué subject matter. It's a film definitely guaranteed to make you a fan of the talents of its director and its stars.