AFI #97: Bringing Up Baby (1938)

Image from Wikipedia

Number 97 is Bringing Up Baby.  It’s a madcap screwball comedy with a delightfully preposterous premise starring two of the finest actors of the 20th century: Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant.  I’d put it in the same general category as I Love Lucy.  If you, too, love Lucy, you’ll probably love this movie.  Adorably ridiculous and thoroughly enjoyable, it is definitely worth watching and perhaps even adding to your collection.  I’ll be adding it to mine!

This movie is chock-full of comedic twists and turns, with one zany situation after another.  It’s fun to watch the plot unfold, so I won’t spoil anything here with a detailed synopsis.

Cary Grant plays Dr. David Huxley.  He’s an adorably awkward paleontologist who, on the eve of his wedding, is about to finally finish his beloved Brontosaurus skeleton (he just needs that intercostal clavicle!), and is desperately trying to secure a much-needed million dollar donation for his museum.

By chance, he meets the capricious Susan Vance (Katharine Hepburn).  Susan enlists David’s help with the leopard (Baby) she is trying to deliver to her aunt.  She also soon decides that he’s the man for her, though he doesn’t know it yet.  Hilarity ensues.

This film is filled with great dialogue, Grant and Hepburn are perfect together, and there’s actually a leopard in the movie.  Plus, the way they say “leopard” is fantastic (leh-pud).  What’s not to like?

Fun Fact #1: Bringing Up Baby also features an adorable performance from Skippy the wire-haired terrier as mischief-making George.  At one point, he steals the last bone David needs to complete his dinosaur.  Skippy was more popularly known as Asta from the Thin Man movies, appearing in over eleven films in the 1930s. According to a 1938 article on Skippy in The American Magazine, he earned $200 a week, while his trainer only made $60.

Fun Fact #2: A scene in Bringing Up Baby may be the first instance of the word “gay” being used to mean homosexual (instead of happy or lively) in an American studio film.  In the scene, circumstances have forced David to borrow one of Susan’s girly robes (complete with marabou trim).  Another character asks him why he is dressed that way, and he responds, “Because I just went gay all of a sudden!”  The word ”gay” is known to have been used as a slang term among the homosexual community at least as early as the 1920s, but was not widely known or used in public at the time Bringing Up Baby was made.  Contemporary audiences would have been more familiar with the traditional definition.  Which meaning is meant in the scene is a subject of debate.  The modern use seems to be a better fit comedically, but that just may be my modern bias.  It’s interesting to note that this line was not in the script—it was reportedly an ad-lib by Cary Grant.

For a taste of the film, here’s one of the best scenes.

Next up at #96 is The Searchers (1956).

AFI #98: Unforgiven (1992)

Poster design by Bill Gold, image from Wikipedia

It’s been a long while since my last post, but I’m (finally) back.  Whoa, whoa, calm yourself.  I know it’s so very exciting, but just take a deep breath… Now, back to the AFI list.

Coming in at number 98 on the AFI’s Top 100 is 1992′s Unforgiven, starring Clint Eastwood, Gene Hackman, Morgan Freeman, and Richard Harris.  Eastwood (who also directed the film) plays William Munny, an aging reformed outlaw reluctantly riding out one last time to collect on a bounty.

Disclosure: I actually watched this movie (and the next few on the list) some six months ago, so my memory of it is a little rusty.  However, one major test of a movie is the impression it leaves you with after the credits have rolled.  Sadly, my lasting impression of Unforgiven is merely that it was long and tedious.  Its 131 minutes felt much, much longer.

It’s not that I can’t handle slow films.  They just have to be handled right.  The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (best. title. ever.) was criticized for its pacing at almost a half an hour longer than Unforgiven.  But I loved that movie and didn’t find it dragging at all.

I recall a few snippets of scenes (mostly the ones with Morgan Freeman because, well, Morgan Freeman), but Unforgiven didn’t leave me with any enduring message or strong feeling.  I understood the point it was making was something about the ambiguities of morality and the blurring of the line between good and evil, etcetera, but that point ended up being a little too… ambiguous itself.  Overall, I just found it to be, well, “meh.”  And for me, that may be worse than a movie I actively dislike.

What’s really unforgivable (ba-dum-tss!) is that this film was not only nominated for, but won the Academy Award for Best Picture in 1992.  Whaaa?  The other films nominated that year were A Few Good Men, The Crying Game, Howard’s End, and Scent of a Woman.  Granted, I’ve only seen one of those, but that one was more deserving of the award.  (And yes, the Academy Awards are political and often unfair, blah blah blah…) That Oscar and the fact that Unforgiven made this list makes me wonder if I’m missing something.  Maybe I’ll give it another shot someday.  Probably not.

Next up: Bringing Up Baby (1938)

AFI #99: Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (1967)

Image from Wikipedia

Number 99 on the AFI list is 1967′s Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner,  directed by Stanley Kramer and starring Spencer Tracy, Sidney Poitier, Katharine Houghton, and Katharine Hepburn.  Wikipedia calls it a comedy, while IMDb classifies it as a drama/romance.  I’m going to go with “dramedy,” because while it deals with serious issues, there are some significantly funny moments in it as well.

Taking place over the span of a single day, the movie follows the emotions and conflicts that unfold when family and friends find out that Joey Drayton’s (played by Katharine Houghton, Hepburn’s real-life niece) new fiancé is black.  Returning home to San Francisco from a trip to Hawaii, where she met, fell in love with and became engaged to Dr. John Prentice (Sidney Poitier), Joey is eager to present her new fiancé to her parents, whose liberal convictions are tested.  Her mother (Katharine Hepburn) is taken aback by the revelation, though she soon comes around, while her father (Spencer Tracy) is far less willing to accept the situation.  It is his approval or disapproval, in fact, that will determine whether the marriage will happen at all.  The tension is brought to a new level when Dr. Prentice’s parents are invited to fly up from Los Angeles for dinner.  His father (Roy E. Glenn) in particular is equally reluctant to support the idea of his son marrying a white woman.  Other notable characters include Tilly, the disapproving cook, played by Isabel Sanford (you might know her as Weezie from The Jeffersons), and Cecil Kellaway, who plays Monsignor Ryan, the memorable Catholic priest and ally to the new couple.

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AFI #100: Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942)

Poster design by Bill Gold, image from Wikipedia

First up on my AFI Top 100 list, coming in at number 100, is the 1942 musical biopic Yankee Doodle Dandy, starring James Cagney as George M. Cohan.  If you’ve ever been to Times Square, you’ve seen “The Man Who Owns Broadway” himself immortalized in bronze in the triangle between 45th and 47th street.

A little about Cohan: he was a hugely significant Broadway actor, singer, dancer, composer, lyricist, playwright and producer throughout the first half of the twentieth century.  He grew up performing with his family, “The Four Cohans,” and went on to write (and produce and direct) his first Broadway musical in 1901 at the age of twenty-two.  Cohan was extremely prolific, creating more than fifty shows between 1904 and 1920.  Cohan himself actually saw Yankee Doodle Dandy shortly before his death in 1942.  Of Cagney’s performance, he reportedly exclamed, “My God, what an act to follow!”  Others seemed to agree with his enthusiasm—James Cagney earned an Academy Award for best actor for his performance in the film.  And in case you didn’t know (I sure didn’t), it’s pronounced “Coe-han,” not “Coen.”

I’ll admit that I was not particularly enthusiastic about starting the project, er, bloject, off with this film.  I mean, look at the poster—I thought I was in for a super hammy musical.  Well, it was hammy, but so, it seems, was Cohan.  One of the best exchanges in the movie lets us know that it is definitely aware of its own ham quotient:

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New Bloject: AFI’s Top 100 Movies

Photo by Brian Gurrola

I have always considered myself somewhat of a film buff.  Not a studied film buff, but more of a haphazard, pick-things-up-here-and-there film buff.  I love movie trivia and quotes.  I love movie trailers and title sequences.  I love DVD commentaries.  As I contemplate an academic move from art history to cinema studies, I thought it would be fruitful to tackle some of the many classic films I have yet to see in a systematic way.  To this end, I have decided to begin by working my way down the American Film Institute’s “100 Years… 100 Movies” list.  I will watch each movie, in order, starting from the bottom, and post a blog entry for each one with my thoughts, comments, criticisms, and whatever interesting tidbits I find on the movie.  Yes, there are some I have seen before, and there are some that I have no desire to watch, but for the sake of completeness, I am watching or re-watching all of them.

Released in 1998, this list was selected by a panel of over 1500 “leaders of the American film community” from a master list of 400 films selected by the AFI.  The “100 years” mentioned are the first 100 years of cinema: 1896-1996, so recent films are not included on the list.  The AFI has since come up with a “10th Anniversary Edition,” which they published in 2007.  I will be sticking with the original list.  For now at least.

Coming soon will be a post on number 100 on the list: Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942).

And remember, discussions in the comments section are welcome!