Movies from the Heart—Bringing Up Baby

Last week’s film staring Bette Davis, Jezebel, was one she made when she was passed over for the role of Scarlett O’Hara in Gone with the Wind. Katharine Hepburn, also passed over for the role, made a quite different film in 1938—Bringing Up Baby by Dudley Nichols.

I still remember the first time I saw this film. It was part of my university’s film series and I knew nothing about it. We sat in folding chairs and viewed the film on a screen that was rolled up for the showing. In other words, the room was far from being a cinema. But I was blown away. It was SOOOO funny—and in a way that I’d never seen ‘funny’ before.

It’s hard to explain just what a screwball comedy is. It’s a love story where the romance is sort of “fun” rather than serious. And it is also often about couples of different classes—which was true of Bringing Up Baby and is true of next week’s film I’ll talk about, Holiday.

So it’s not a love story between high class Susan and museum curator David where the love story is paramount, it’s a love story where the silliness of the match is paramount. You’ll get an idea of what I mean by looking at this trailer for the film:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F25nzu6hh0Q

And if you haven’t seen the film, it’s important to note that when David says he just wants to get married, he’s not talking about Susan, he’s talking about getting married to his fiancée, a woman whom he works with at the museum.

It’s also interesting to note that David is doing a little bit of cross-dressing in the film, having been forced to use Susan’s bathrobe. This is true of other screwball comedies, the cross-dressing being yet another element of what was considered bizarre humor.

This is a film where, when you leave the theatre, the things you remember are the silly bits that made you laugh. Sure, there was the love story, and you hoped the couple would get together, but what you remember are the slapstick-moments when David came face to face with a real live leopard, when Susan was unaware that the back of her dress was missing at a fancy restaurant. And there are so many more. The film is pretty much one funny bit after another.

In many ways, this film reminds me of some of the better sketches on programs like Saturday Night Live. It’s over the top, it’s outrageous, it could never happen in real life, but the film makes it seem like it actually DID happen and we laugh at these crazy people.

The screwball comedy began in the mid-30s—with the great depression raging in the U.S.—and people needed crazy/funny/silly stuff to take their minds off their very real problems. And the movies came to the rescue!

Next week, Holiday, which is almost a liberal sort of comedy. It’s a good one!

Copyright © Diane Lake

19Nov23

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