You Can't Take It With You
YOU CAN'T TAKE IT WITH YOU (U)
D: Frank Capra
Columbia (Frank Capra)
US 1938
127 mins
Comedy
W: Robert Riskin [based on the play by George
S. Kaufman & Moss Hart]
DP: Joseph Walker
Ed: Gene Havlick
Mus: Dimitri Tiomkin
Jean Arthur (Alice Sycamore), Lionel Barrymore (Martin
Vanderhof), James Stewart (Tony Kirby), Edward Arnold (Anthony P. Kirby), Mischa Auer (Kolenkhov), Spring Byington (Penny Sycamore)
You Can't Take It With You is an adaptation of a screwball
comedy stage play which benefitted from being released at exactly the right time, when America was still suffering the aftermath of the Great Depression.
A
family of eccentric New Yorkers upset the establishment of Wall Street by encouraging people to give up their clerical jobs and live in their mansion where they can pursue their desired vocation.
Things get complicated for the family, however, when the daughter of the family gets romantically involved with the charming young son of a businessman.
The film makes fun of the etiquette (or lack of) of the world
of big business and it's your typical Frank Capra fable, but it's nowhere near the great director's finest work, even though it did win him a third Best Director Oscar and was named Best Picture
of 1938 at the same awards.
7/10
