How meta!

Anyway, this looks a bit… I mean, it’s a DVD, because it hasn’t been released on bluray, which is odd in itself, because:

Howard Hawks/Cary Grant/Ginger Rogers/Marilyn Monroe! And no bluray!? Did the prints get lost so they can’t do a 2K release? Is it in the public domain?

But once it gets started for real, it looks pretty good — it was just the pre title sequence that looked like it was nineteenth generation.

Oh, is Hawks trying to do a new Bringing Up Baby? Cary Grant is doing another absent-minded professor, and there’s another wild animal (this time it’s a chimpanzee)…

That’s an impressive ape.

So the gag in this movie is that the Cary Grant character is experimenting with a youth serum. When he took it, he became reckless, but fun. When she took it, she became a total nightmare, which is unfair to Ginger Rogers, who’s fantastic at doing outrageous comedy — but she doesn’t really get much of a chance with this script.

It’s a funny movie. But it also feels so… misguided? It’s like they went “OK, we have Grant and Rogers. We don’t have to write a script”. Instead just the sheer idea of having them behave first like teenagers, and then like ten-year-olds would be enough to carry the movie. And it almost is! It’s funny, because these two actors are amazing at what they do.

But compare it with Bringing Up Baby… It had so much funny repartee, and a script with lots of interesting bits. This is just lazy. I mean, on the writers’ part. So the bits when Grant and Rogers aren’t whooping it up, it just sits there.

Monkey Business. Howard Hawks. 1952. ⚃

Even as early 40s screwball comedies go, this is very… odd. I mean, it’s very, very funny, but it’s more a broad satire than a comedy, but it’s not at all clear what the target of the satire is (beyond the press and celebrity trials). It seems like any scene here could be a political point being made, but it could also just be random silliness.

One thing that could explain it is if this is based on a kooky stage show — it’s set in a very limited number of locations, and it’s got that frantic rhythm…

And then of course Ginger Rogers does a little tap number all of a sudden.

I didn’t quite know what to make of this movie at the start. But as it went along, I just thought it was absolutely brilliant. It’s way ahead of its time — it feels more like a 70s British satire than a 40s comedy. It’s so… relentless. But so much funnier than those 70s satires.

Ooooh:

A film adaptation of a 1926 play Chicago by Maurine Dallas Watkins, a journalist who found inspiration in two real-life Chicago trials (Beulah Annan and Belva Gaertner) she had covered for the press.

I’ve never seen Chicago!

But… (spoilers) in this version she wasn’t guilty.

Flagg is right that it isn’t perfect, but it’s just so funny. All those little bits… And Ginger Rogers is amazing.

Roxie Hart. William A. Wellman. 1942. ⚅

How meta.

“Write what you know” is an old adage, but when it comes to movies about movie making — they’re usually now big money makers, are they?

Tsk tsk only bounders have Louis Vuitton!

Heh heh the most American thing ever.

So this movie is about immigration, which must have been a hot button subject in 1941. This was before the US entered WWII, I think? (Pearl Harbour didn’t happen until late in the year, if I recall correctly…)

But no! He’s a downright bounder!

I can see what Hazel Flagg means… it’s a very cynical script indeed. But surely the bounder is going to turn out to have a heart of gold after all!?

I’m not sure I agree that it’s a cynical script (unless the director changed it a lot). It’s more a… “sure, you’ve got reasons to be sceptical about all these Europeans, but here’s why you’re for letting them in all the same” move — it’s pro-European immigration propaganda, really. And very well done! Have your hankies ready! I loved it.

Hold Back The Dawn. Mitchell Leisen. 1941. ⚄