Bergsonian Critique

Screwball [pronounced skrue’bol] is a noun that means unbalanced, erratic, irrational, and unconventional, in which became a popular slang word in the 1930s. It was applied to films where everything was a juxtaposition: educated and uneducated, rich and poor, intelligent and stupid, honest and dishonest, and most of all male and female. When two people fell in love, they did not simply surrender to their feelings, they battled it out. They lied to one another, often assuming indifferent personas toward each other. They often employed hideous tricks on each other, until finally after running out of inventions, fall into each other’s arms. It was fossilized comedy, physical and often painful, but mixed with the highest level of wit and sophistication, depending wholly on elegant and inventive writing. ~ via Modern Times

My introduction to such subgenre of comedy is very recent, and for someone who openly discloses his affection for romantic comedies, it is indeed a blissful discovery. In the last two weeks I have seen more films that I usually do in a single month, and my enamored admiration for the classics has never been as vigorous as it is now, and that what has led me to write this post in the first place. Truth to be told, however, is that I have had to truncate my original draft in order to make my exposition more concise and piercingly focused. You should grasp the matter of consistency that pervades the films that I have selected for my discussion below, as I try to elucidate meticulously their differences as well as their similarities. The bigger portion of the discussion will be reserved to what I believe is the quintessential screwball comedy, and that is The Philadelphia Story.

The premise of George Cukor‘s The Philadelphia Story is simply an embodiment of stylish wit and charm, evincing the same concern with class and life decisions as Cukor’s earlier Cary Grant/Katharine Hepburn vehicle in Holiday (more on that later). Hepburn plays Tracy Lord, a society heiress with a long history as a tabloid gossip bastion, especially in regards to her marriage to and angry divorce from Grant‘s C.K. Dexter Haven (a brilliant high-class name if ever there was one). The opening scene perfectly captures the aversion between these two, in a quick and wordless evocation of the end of their marriage: Hepburn breaks Grant’s golf club over her knee, and Grant palms her face and shoves her backwards, after first feigning a punch. But when Tracy plans to get remarried, to the nouveau-riche George Kittredge (John Howard), Dexter returns into her life, dragging with him a pair of gossip-rag journalists who he plans to introduce as friends of his.

From then on, the film is a game of appearances and realities, with nothing ever quite what it seems. Dexter is seemingly out for revenge by showing up at the wedding and bringing scornful journalists with him, but he actually has more altruistic motives in mind. And the journalists, Connor (James Stewart) and Liz (Ruth Hussey), must maintain their facades while gathering information about the Lord family. Meanwhile, Tracy sees right through her ex’s subterfuge immediately, but is forced to accept the journalists as friends anyway, due to blackmail plot by the tabloid’s editor. It’s only after all the expositions have been established that the first genuine sparkle appears in the film, as Tracy and her sophisticated young sister Dinah (Virginia Weidler, in one of those annoyingly bright little kid roles) playact before the bewildered journalists, hoping to present a super-exaggerated portrait of the society lifestyle for their benefit. This scene is hilarious, and the smooth-talking, constantly quipping Hepburn quickly proves a strangely compelling counterpart for the curt Stewart.

The duo achieves an uneasy rapport almost as soon as they’re onscreen together, totally different from Hepburn’s already established rapport with Grant as her ex. In Grant, Hepburn has a true onscreen equal, someone with a sharp wit to match hers and an ability to trade barbs back and forth with ease. Stewart, in his best self-affecting personality, can be witty too, but his conversations with Hepburn aren’t so much back-and-forth as give-and-take, up-and-down, going from periods of rapid-fire exchanges to more halting moments of withdrawal and uncertainty.

The difference between the two male leads and their complicated connections with Hepburn provides the film’s central spark and tension. It’s telling that, from the very beginning, the prospective husband George is sidelined in favor of not just one, but two other leads. He’s a conventional cipher, a man who pulled himself up from nothing to be a successful businessman, and who has now totally bought into the status and self-importance of his new class. In contrast, both the impoverished Stewart and the born-rich Grant seem much more natural, relaxed in their skins and not overly concerned with appearances or traditions.

As this précis suggests, Cukor’s interest in class is complex and not at all couched in the usual simplistic terms. The Lord family is undoubtedly upper-class, and they accept their privilege with casual ease, while Connor is nearly insolvent, a struggling writer working way beneath his talent just to pay the bills. Connor is understandably resentful of the riches around him at the Lord home, but his resentment cools as he grows to know Tracy better, although their discussions still often have a tinge of class warfare about them. This is especially apparent when Tracy offers Connor the use of a country house for private writing, and he rejects her by saying that the concept of wealthy patronesses has gone out of style. Connor just wants to be his own man, even if it means struggling, and this ultimately is the film’s primary message.

It is palpable that both Connor and Dexter are comfortable with who they are, while George and Tracy aren’t — Tracy, especially, seems uncertain about what direction to go in her life, or even what kind of person she is. She’s repeatedly told, sometimes in insult, sometimes with the best of intentions, that she is a cold, distant, and self-centered goddess, and only Connor seems to see the warmth and intelligence in her.

Cukor deftly juggles this introspective subtext with the romantic interest of the central love triangle (actually complicated into a hexagon by the additional points of George and Liz), and a great deal of humor. The film is at its peak in the scenes between Connor and Tracy, especially a remarkable sequence in which the two of them grow progressively drunker and drunker over the course of a night as they ramble and talk and drink. The scene is a series of back-and-forth movements and gestures, with each of them moving towards each other and then backing off several times.

As expected, Cukor handles this beautifully, subtly increasing the romantic tension in the scene even as the tone of the dialogue largely remains friendly and unsentimental but without excess. When they finally kiss, the music soars and then jolts to a halt, as though pausing to breath, and in the silence between kisses Hepburn simply whispers, “Golly.” It’s a moving, hilarious, wonderful moment, and a perfect movies-kiss no less. Without resorting to typical Hollywood grandstanding or manipulation, Cukor simply evokes the emotional depth of that kiss.

The Philadelphia Story abounds in moments like this, the result of Cukor’s ability to organically combine witty dialogue, emotionally complicated characters (and performances to draw them out), and the subtle use of formal elements to gently nudge the scene towards its meaning. He neatly shifts between light humor, low-key drama, and intellectual ruminations on identity, purpose, and the decisions made at crucial junctures in life. The film never quite settles into any of these modes, but it never quite feels disjointed either. Its story flows seamlessly, and best of all, it doesn’t rely on stock clichés or conventions. Its complex conclusion somewhat defies the logic of Hollywood endings (though it’s definitely a happy one), because it arises from the characters and their actions rather than from any clever twist or concession to audience expectations.

With that being said, it is imperative that we turn to another excellent screwball comedy, Holiday, which the first motion picture to encapsulate the Grant/Hepburn dynamic. Here, the film is a moving, joyous parable about the importance of finding your own place in life. It boasts one of Cary Grant’s best performances, as a free-spirited self-made man who thinks he’s in love with a stuffy society heiress (Doris Nolan) but seems more of a natural match for her fun-loving sister, Hepburn. Every second of screen time between the two reluctant lovers glows and sparkles with the pleasure of seeing two such vivacious performers enjoying one another’s company. It’s obvious from the moment they’re introduced and shake hands with a playful not that they’re the film’s real couple, and Nolan is all but cast aside.

The film is a tribute to remaining youthful, and there’s a childlike spirit to the way Grant and Hepburn play here: riding tricycles, doing somersaults, putting on shows, not to mention the witty verbal banter and playacting of their conversations. The centerpiece of the film is a New Year’s Eve party where Grant and Hepburn retreat to an upstairs room, away from the snobbish society crowd, along with Grant’s friends (Edward Everett Horton and Jean Dixon) and Hepburn’s drunkard brother (Lew Ayres). This small, intimate party takes place in the only comfortable room in a splendid mansion, the only room with a normal sense of scale.

Hence, throughout the film, Cukor isolates Grant in long shots of rooms that seem to have been built for eight-foot tall giants, emphasizing his discomfort with the luxury and lavishness that seems to await him if he marries into this family. It’s only in the upstairs playroom, with its cozy fireplace and leftover childhood toys, that Grant and Hepburn can relax and be themselves.

Finally, another screwball that I deem it valuable to discuss (assuming you’ve forget the consistency I mentioned previously; it also stars Hepburn and Grant) is Howard Hawks’s Bringing Up Baby. Here, the film dazzlingly employs the successful formula of such prior classic films as Frank Capra’s It Happened One Night and Gregory La Cava’s My Man Godfrey, in which madcap heiresses pit their senses of fun, irreverence, and total irresponsibility against the seriousness, logic, and dignity of working class heroes. In such screwball comedies of the mid 1930s, the leading couple’s courtships of verbal battles provide a series of humorous sexual conflicts that are overcome but unresolved in the reconciliation during the “happy endings.” Bringing Up Baby takes the antagonisms and extremes embodied in the screwball comedy a little further than any of the other films of the genre.

Starring Hepburn as the completely doddering heiress and Grant as an overly stuffy, self-important paleontologist, Bringing Up Baby exaggerates the lover-antagonist formula of the screwball comedy for a humorous battle between the sexes in which the stereotypes of sex roles are reversed. Hepburn’s character is the aggressor, and her relentless pursuit of Grant engages him in a series of amusing misadventures that become increasingly foolish as the movie progresses. Grant’s character, which by nature is docile, submissive, and dutiful, has his dignity stripped away layer by layer in the course of Hepburn’s bizarre schemes. But Hawks uses the division of his characters into masculine and feminine stereotypes in order to allow each to have a liberating effect on the other.

This Hawksian formula of sex-role reversals, in one way or another, relies on assertive heroines to peel away the dignity and mock seriousness of bumbling feminized heroes. As each hero’s sense of identity and self-image crumbles, the ensuing confusion provides the comedy and the key to his liberation from a narrow restrictive code of behavior. Hawks pushes his male characters’ sexual confusion to such extremes that they are forced to parade around in women’s clothing.

Ultimately, it is perhaps easy to disclose, and without sounding exceedingly pompous, that screwball comedies are basically romantic comedies for the smarties (though one can say they are parodies of the latter). While it is easy to devour these stories at face value and to deem them as remnants of the past, the screwball is still very much with us (The Hangover, anyone?), as a beacon of the giddy achievement possible within popular entertainment. But the bravado with these classics is that not only they showcased the fragility of human condition so brilliantly on-screen, but also challenged it so gallantly out-screen (i.e. the Great Depression). It’s no wonder that past comedies used to get nominated in multitudes for movie awards, a prospect that is dim and rare for the contemporaries.