This is the screwiest screwball comedy ever! I love it.

This really is a marvel. It’s like the writers meticulously went through every single scene and went “can we add more zaniness here? yes we can!”, no matter how small a scene. It’s gag, gag, gag, relentlessly.

It works cumulatively — after a while everything’s a brilliant joke. I haven’t laughed this much at a movie in yonks.

Using those huge goofy dogs in just about every scene works beautifully — they add a sense of chaos to everything.

And it’s truly an ensemble movie — absolutely every character get a bunch of gags. All the actors are great here.

Hey, that’s Willie Best. I saw him in… oh, yeah, The Ghost Breakers.

The movie is absolutely hilarious. And it doesn’t suffer (like so many otherwise perfect comedies) from a serious Dreaded Third Act — it’s funny all the way through. I wonder who wrote this…

Oh, it’s based on a play, based on a novel. So they were just piling on gags at every stage, I guess.

It’s just about perfect.

Merrily We Live. Norman Z. McLeod. 1938. ⚅

All movies should be set in San Francisco. (Well, except for the ones set in New York, of course.)

Very noir.

Oooo! Suspicious music!

So noir.

Wow, he really looks different without that stache.

The plot here is… it’s… It doesn’t really work.

I was really into the first half of this movie, but it’s just getting a bit annoying.

The hat designer on this movie worked overtime.

See?

I think the plot is just so crazy that it’s hard to take the movie seriously. I kinda stopped paying attention towards the end.

Nora Prentiss. Vincent Sherman. 1947. ⚃

I’m watching this because it’s on the list.

Oh, Paul Mazursky… I feel like I used to see his name all the time, but haven’t seen it mentioned at all for decades.

Oh, right… I have seen a lot of these movies, but not his 70s films.

Ah, rural Brooklyn…

The promised land…

The promised beret.

The lighting on this is pretty odd. Usually just a single lamp, so you get a lot of hard shadows. So it’s not natural lighting, either. Could they only afford a single lamp?

It fun to watch a movie made in the 70s that’s so nostalgic for the 50s. (The cool bits of the 50s, i.e. New York, mind you.)

Hey!

I’m going alternatively “wow, this is really good” and “wow, this is really cheesy”. Like every other scene or something.

The performances are good, and I like the look of the movie. The plot has a few surprises, but is pretty much what you’d expect. It’s a nice movie.

Next Stop, Greenwich Village. Paul Mazursky. 1976. ⚃