Susie and I have now sufficiently
penetrated the arcana of our FranceTelecom cable package here in Paris that
we can locate movies on television and then, with a series of secret remote
control maneuvres, get them to switch from the French dubbing back into the
original English. Last night, we
stumbled upon that great old Cary Grant Katherine Hepburn comedy, Bringing Up
Baby. After we stopped laughing, I
went on line to check on the identities of some of the supporting cast, and
stumbled upon this philosophical gem. I
mean, I like Stanley, always have, but there are limits:
“Bringing Up Baby was the
second of four films starring Grant and Hepburn; the others were Sylvia Scarlett (1935), Holiday (1938)
and The Philadelphia
Story (1940). Their last three belong to a sub-genre of
screwball comedy known as the comedy of remarriage,
described by philosopher Stanley Cavell as
Hollywood's crowning achievement. Cavell noted that Bringing Up Baby was
made in a tradition of romantic comedy with roots from ancient Rome to
Shakespeare.”
2 comments:
Holiday is quite wonderful and has a rare (certainly for the time) sympathetic portrait of an egalitarian academic couple!
I do like Cavell... but there are days when I cannot roll my eyes far back enough, haha.
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