It is remarkable on its own that George Cukor united Katharine Hepburn, Cary Grant, and James Stewart in one film and captured such fine performances from each, though The Philadelphia Story is also even more delightful for its marvellously constructed web of romantic entanglements, which its lively screenplay and stars pick apart with insurmountable charm and a quietly savage wit.
Alfred Hitchcock’s eerie adaptation of Rebecca maintains the Gothic novel’s mysterious, lyrical quality, but it is especially through his floating camerawork and evocative expressionism that he conjures the memory of its unseen title character, psychologically haunting the new wife of a wealthy widower with the legacy she hangs over his estate.
To be human in Pinocchio is to possess both free will and a conscience, and it is through its rich allegory of puppets and donkeys that Walt Disney imparts his dark, moralistic musings with dynamic visual expressions, crafting a staggering accomplishment in hand-drawn animation, each one tangibly alive in their tactile movements and wood-carved textures.
There may be screwball comedies that can match His Girl Friday in sheer narrative lunacy, but Howard Hawks’ satirical take on the newspaper industry stands unparalleled in its breakneck pacing which, when combined with its rhythmic, rattling screenplay and the verbal gifts of Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell, becomes an accelerating effort to keep outdoing its own hysteria.
Preston Sturges’ trademark commitment to running gags and expeditious pacing is present here in one of his earliest films, Christmas in July, and the faith individuals place in mainstream opinions rather than thinking for themselves is a perfect target for a director with such a skill in crafting farcical escalations.
The irony of a corrupt political system defeating itself through its own artifice is not easily lost in The Great McGinty, especially as Preston Sturges finds the humour in the unpredictability of life in the public eye, marking a modest debut from one of the great comedic directors of Hollywood.
