Jimmy Stewart made so many memorable dramatic movies -- "Vertigo," "The Naked Spur" -- that it's easy to overlook what a splendid comedic actor he was. Not just heartwarmers like "It's a Wonderful Life" but flat-out comedies like "Bell, Book, and Candle" and "No Highway In The Sky." Well, I guess those two aren't thoroughbred comedies but they're amusing, and if the roles are more complex than, say, Jerry Lewis', why Stewart is the man to handle them.
Stewart is a middle-class husband and father who loves his wife, Barbara Hale, and his two kids, Natalie Wood and Tommy Rettig. He has a job as manager (or something) in a department store in an Indiana City. Everything is rolling along smoothly for Stewart, maybe a little boring, and then he has to go and give the correct answer on a radio quiz program, netting him some forty thousand 1950 dollars worth of merchandise, including hundreds of cans of soup and a side of beef.
His life is disrupted, his home invaded and turned upside down, he owes more in income taxes than he makes in a year, his wife throws him out, and he loses his job. But, yes, it's a comedy.
There must have been many men in Stewart's position in 1950. Like Stewart, many of them had spent the war years in uniform, leading lives of desperate excitement. Now they're home four or five years later with their loved ones and their tract houses and -- it's hard to put you finger on -- it's a routine that never changes. Tomorrow will be just like today.
All the performances are good, with Stewart at the top of his form, except that some people can play a drunk and others can't -- and he can't. But the most stunning performance comes during the brief appearance of Fritz Feld, the psychiatrist in "Bringing Up Baby," who is a long-haired piano player pounding out the Hungarian dances while Stewart is trying to hold an important conversation. Told to stop, Feld spins around, his eyes goggling, and his hands beside his ears, fingers opened like claws.
Pretty funny, all of it.
Stewart is a middle-class husband and father who loves his wife, Barbara Hale, and his two kids, Natalie Wood and Tommy Rettig. He has a job as manager (or something) in a department store in an Indiana City. Everything is rolling along smoothly for Stewart, maybe a little boring, and then he has to go and give the correct answer on a radio quiz program, netting him some forty thousand 1950 dollars worth of merchandise, including hundreds of cans of soup and a side of beef.
His life is disrupted, his home invaded and turned upside down, he owes more in income taxes than he makes in a year, his wife throws him out, and he loses his job. But, yes, it's a comedy.
There must have been many men in Stewart's position in 1950. Like Stewart, many of them had spent the war years in uniform, leading lives of desperate excitement. Now they're home four or five years later with their loved ones and their tract houses and -- it's hard to put you finger on -- it's a routine that never changes. Tomorrow will be just like today.
All the performances are good, with Stewart at the top of his form, except that some people can play a drunk and others can't -- and he can't. But the most stunning performance comes during the brief appearance of Fritz Feld, the psychiatrist in "Bringing Up Baby," who is a long-haired piano player pounding out the Hungarian dances while Stewart is trying to hold an important conversation. Told to stop, Feld spins around, his eyes goggling, and his hands beside his ears, fingers opened like claws.
Pretty funny, all of it.