Monday, November 14, 2011

97. My Man Godfrey

My Man Godfrey
1936

I saw this film quite awhile ago but I do remember loving it.  I am a huge William Powell fan for all his movies are so witty and fast.  I also really like Carole Lombard; her story is so tragic and she was extremely talented.


This amazing cast is used to its full potential with the rapid fire screenplay.  The story centers around a ridiculous aristocratic family that takes in a tramp as a game at a party.  He takes the job as their butler and Lombard eventually falls for his charms.  The book criticizes the ending for being too romantic and not very smart but I enjoyed the movie from start to finish.


Although this movie is a comedy, it made me pensive and sad.  Lombard's short life is truly a blow to cinema because her talents equal (if not surpass) that of even more revered actresses of the day.  Powell and Lombard were also divorced when they filmed this movie so it also reminded me of lost love.  A truly great movie.


RATING: ****-


Interesting Facts:


First film to be nominated for all four acting categories.


Carole Lombard often added swear words to her parts so she had to re-film a lot of scenes.


I ate goat cheese today!!!!!!!


First part:

4 comments:

  1. Yes, this one is great, but man, the dialogue is fast.
    Lombard could have gone on to do really great things. There were not to many truly funny female actors, but she was one of them.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Good work on the goats cheese

    This was great. The cast were superb - especially the dotty mother - so no surprise that they got nominated in all four Oscar acting categories.

    The moral message I sense it was rather proud of did get a bit conflicted by the end. Poor people are valuable too, but only because it turns out that some of them are actually rich people who fell on hard times. Not quite as profound as it promised to be in the first couple of scenes.

    I'm always a fan of snappy early-Hollywood dialogue of the type that you sadly never see any more.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Haha wow past Amanda was quite pleased with that. I don't blame her. I like the early-Hollywood dialogue thing too.

      Delete