the only reason I watched this the first time around was because of It Happened One Night. I liked Claudette Cobert's work in that and thought, why not give this a shot. This is really a great little flick, and the kind of movie making I still wish went on. Just really good hearted light fun.
shareI saw this movie because of Colbert in It Happened On Night and also because it was a Sturges flick. Also I'd seen Joel McCrea is a few movies. Can't say it was the greatest but it's a good light-hearted romp. Surprising themes they try to cover in the beginning when the wife decides their marriage is over b/c they don't have money and then talks about getting other men to pay for the pleasure of "being with her"? Ofcourse in today's vocab, that would absolutely translate to "indecent proposal" category, would it not? So it was slightly shocking in that regard at first. But it played out as the screwball comedy it was intended to be. Ofcourse you do have to wonder... if men would do anything for Claudette Colbert, what would they have done for the likes of Marilyn Monroe or Kim Novak??!!
shareor Lana Turner...Grace Kelly...Audrey Hepburn....all arguably a little higher on the "Attractive" ladder than Colbert.....who I think is a fantastic actress by the way.
"..But dude, if i've watched it, it's gotta be a classic.."
or Lana Turner...Grace Kelly...Audrey Hepburn....all arguably a little higher on the "Attractive" ladder than Colbert.....who I think is a fantastic actress by the way.You can't be serious! Maybe Lana had more raw sex appeal than Claudette - but arch Grace or boyish Audrey? Can you imagine either of them stopping traffic ala Colbert in IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT - I sure can't!!
let me go out on a limb and say Grace Kelly could stop traffic = )...certainly if I were driving the car, it would stop lol
..."We all have it coming kid"...
Anyone who has seen Claudette Colbert as Empress Poppaea in Cecil B. DeMille's "The Sign of the Cross," bathing in a pool of asses milk, would never say she was not one of the most attractive of actresses. And as the asses milk, despite DeMille's claims, was not asses milk, but powdered cows milk, and since the scene took several days under the hot lights to photograph, no one should disparage Claudette's acting prowess, smiling as she floated languorously in that stinking pool of soured milk.
Anyone comparing Claudette to Lana Turner, for example, should take into account their nineteen-years age difference, and make certain they are not comparing contemporaneous, but rather chronologically equivalent images.
McCrea has the thankless job of being the straight man in this comedy. I think he did a creditable job. I have to see Sullivan's Travels next to see if it's any different, his role, I mean.
shareThis sort of movie can never be remade, because we no longer have the studio system and because we no longer have the talent to write, direct or perform this kind of delicious material. Realizing that this was made in the soundstages and
back lots at Paramount, whereas now we expect authentic sets and CGI, a picture like this would be a failure today. Look at the crap that gets greenlit today and wonder how it can be made. Will it hold up against classics like this?
Who could possibly play these roles today? No one who's American for sure, because most of the so called stars aren't trained. Keep in mind that the studio system trained performers and roles were written for them.
We can hope they'll make a picture like this, but don't count on it. It would be better to complain about the movies that are lost or haven't been preserved.
Furthermore, complain to the American Film Institute who allowed such great women as Colbert, Audrey Hepburn, Sylvia Sidney and others have passed on without earning a Life Achievement Award, while men like Tom Hanks, Warren Beatty and
Steven Spielberg have received them. Why not honor Joanne Woodward, Gena Rowlands, Olivia de Havilland, Shirley MacLaine or Luise Rainer? They are all alive and while Rainer and de Havilland don't work anymore, shouldn't they be honored for their achievement?
Hollywood will never be the same. It's sad, isn't it?
This is a wonderful post. These women need to be honored now. Ranier and deHavilland especially probably do not have many more years to receive such an award. What can we do about it? The AFI seems to honor people who the masses recognize rather than the stars of the past--might not get a big enough TV audience!!
shareWho could possibly play these roles today? No one who's American for sure, because most of the so called stars aren't trained. Keep in mind that the studio system trained performers and roles were written for them.
Sadly, I don't think there's anyone working today who has the necessary command of the language to make a good show of this kind of material. What must have passed then as basic literacy, today, is hard to find at all in a working actor. It's like they threw out the Shakespeare with the bath water in favor of such primal fare as Stanley Kowalski and Mamet. Low art can be good art but it's nice to have a spectrum of low to high for contrast and when everyone practices low art only it doesn't take too long for high art to become an out of reach antiquity which we can only marvel at but no longer able to reproduce because we all flocked to the refreshing fad of throwing out the old sophisticated conventions in favor of some rebellious new artform, genre, style that is simple and primitive. New movements are wonderful but outright revolutions of sweeping change often throw out a lot of the good with the not so good. Examples of this are everywhere in modern life. Architecture, music, literature... you name it. What buildings built today have the florid touches of craftsmanship and detail from the past, say, as an example, baroque or beaux arts eras? Those sort of things may be out of fashion now but you'd be hard pressed to find the artisans even capable of producing such works today, even one of them, much less the proliferation such as there was. And now most people have never seen these things so they certainly don't miss them. It only takes a short while to reset the public's consciousness to a new (lower) normal.
Likewise with music. I love rock music but when the fad of rock'n'roll swept the nation and the world in the 50s, pretty soon it was passe and even square to have any affinity for "standards", classical music or any other "legit" music and nowadays, you'd have to look pretty hard to find a big name musician who has any sort of knowledge of music on level of, say, popular tunesmiths of the first half of the 20c, like the Gershwins, Berlin, Kern, Cole Porter, etc. Now, rock music is based on very low art forms of repetitive and exceedingly simplistic "riffs" crafted from five-note pentatonic "blues" scale notes which, while effective, are no more than the most simplistic folk idioms and does not present much of a framework such that we should want to throw out all of the great work of earlier masters, such as those I mentioned above and others, and all of the sophisticated musical structure contained within their works.
All this to say that as a culture, we've been eating at McDonalds so long that we've forgotten what other more interesting cuisine tastes like when it comes to culture, music, dramatic literature the cinema. At least the movies from back then still exist and we can screen them again and again and revisit these now all but lost niceties of cultrue but the tide on this stuff has been going out for quite some time. Don't expect there to be a growing return to appreciation of these kind of works. We are a civilization in decline and a glance across the board at ourselves, as a whole, when considering what was once considered good versus what is offered today in its stead, it's clear that we're not going to see more films like this anytime soon. Maybe never. I think we're heading for a new Dark Ages.
<<Sadly, I don't think there's anyone working today who has the necessary command of the language to make a good show of this kind of material.>>
I have never seen anyone identify the problem as precisely as this. Thank you. You are absolutely right.
I watch a lot of films from the 40s and 50s, and even the B-level films of those times had writing that was as least three times as good as the dialogue one hears now. Almost everything is dumbed-down today, including, sadly, most of the audience. My dad learned things in high school that are only taught in college today.
"Joey, have you ever been in a Turkish prison?"
Oh what a great example of "golden age thought." You should watch Midnight In Paris. You might find some insight. Please do keep in mind that Screwball Comedies were considered the lowest art form at the time. Sturges, who pushed the boundaries beyond what was considered possible during the Production Code Era with The Miracle Of Morgan's Creek, was thought of as particularly low brow at the time. It took 40 years for someone (Cavell) to posit that these films were, indeed, art and, even then, he faced enough opposition that he felt the need to write a 40 page introduction defending himself.
share@jackboot.
I used to say that music peaked in 1791. Of course, that's the year that Mozart died. Having said that, I admit I do like the "standards" and "Broadway" music.
another Preston Sturges.
The closest anyone has gotten to him is the Coen Brothers, in Raising Arizona and O Brother, Where Art Thou?, the latter having, of course, a Sturges connection.
We could have high times
if you'll abide
The closest anyone has gotten to him is the Coen Brothers, in Raising Arizona and O Brother, Where Art Thou?, the latter having, of course, a Sturges connection.
Sort of. They are prolific and bankable auteurs today. They have the vision, the writing skills and technical skills to make movies that stand above most all of the rest and which show a certain wit or smarts or intelligence. But, they're not on par with Sturges when it comes to writing. Sturges is practically a font of witty dialogue on the order of Mozart and his music, when you consider his seemingly endless stream of sharp wit and dialogue with which he imbues his characters. The Coen's don't really go there. They tend toward the lower strata of society in their characters, their dialogue, for the most part, reflects tougher elements of society and is more simple and primitive. It is very entertaining and reflects some of these societal elements well but they are not on par with Sturges. And that may well be deliberate as audiences today can hardly understand correct English, much less correct English delivered at high speed and rife with double-entendres and all the rest.
I love both Sturges and the Coens, and wouldn't want to have to make an argument over who's "better". I do feel that the ghost of Sturges is alive and well in much of the brothers' writing.
My only bone of contention with your last post concerns the social strata of the Coens' characters, which I think is more varied than you allow.
We could have high times
if you'll abide
Just a bit more.
Though I do feel that there will never be another Sturges, you can't listen to those conversations between Walter and the Dude without thinking of Preston.
We could have high times
if you'll abide
Yes, Sturges lives on in much of the Coens' work.
I want to shake every limb in the Garden of Eden
and make every lover the love of my life
"Coens are not on par with Sturges when it comes to writing".
It is my impression they´re considerably better at it. The writing in Sturges movies is only moderately amusing and not nearly as sophisticated as some would have it; also, Sturges didn´t possess the kinda versatility Coens do as they´ve been able to successfully apply their verbal wit to a wide range of genres and characters of extremely diverse backgrounds and nature. And, for crying out loud, Sturges didn´t make any "high art" as the ridiculous suggestion seems to be - The Palm Beach Story being just a slightly superior version of the kinda forgettable fluffy waffle Hollywood has never had any problem churning out. Including today.
"facts are stupid things" - Ronald Reagan
It's conceivable. Both elements essential to screwball comedy -- comic romance and zinging, witty dialogue -- still exist. They just don't exist together any longer.
High Fidelity and Punch-Drunk Love are two 21st century classic romantic comedies, and they are both utterly un-screwball. Ever since Annie Hall romantic comedies have had a serious dramatic side that screwball comedies only possess at a self-reflective level. I'm not sure that's a bad thing.
Sorkin's dialogue in The Social Network is as brilliant and witty as in any screwball comedy, but of course in another context entirely.
Prepare your minds for a new scale of physical, scientific values, gentlemen.share
It is a shame Hollywood does not make films like this anymore. Perhaps they cannot. I think one like this would be a huge seller.
At least we can go back and see the way it was done, and enjoy the past, thanks to DVD's and TCM.
It was an enjoyable screwball comedy with zany characters and witty, suggestive dialogue. Preston Sturges' writing had the ability to use hilarious metaphors which were comical or suggestive remaining me of Easy Living (1937), which Sturges' previously wrote. Of course the dialogue has to be enhanced by the performances which Colbert and McCrea perfected within their chemistry.
"I'd rather be hated for who I am, than loved for who I am not".
Will Hollywood ever make movies like this again?
I've been watching several "screwball" comedies for about a year, and I'm so happy that I found this genre of film. I absolutely love them. Saw TPBS last night and thought it was one of the funniest. One of the many! And what a surprise ending!!!
I don't think films like this will be made again if the last 60 years are any indication. I'm grateful that they were made, period!
There are many great romance/comedies of our modern time:
The Wes Anderson films
Punch-Drunk Love
Lost In Translation
The Big Lebowski
Midnight In Paris
I mean... much of Louie is great too...
If you're talking about screwball comedies in general... well... they haven't really made a comeback yet. I think people just don't identify with them anymore. There's something about quick comedy that makes them unsure when to laugh.
The TV show Veep has some elements of screwball such as the fast traded insults. But there are no adventurous or romantic subplots that screwballs have.
I've heard Intolerable Cruelty and Down With Love exhibit screwball characteristics but I haven't seen them yet.
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