Screwball Subversion: Howard Hawks' BRINGING UP BABY (1938, dir by Howard Hawks, RKO, 102mns) by Craig Hammill

Screwball comedies are characterized by madcap energy and eccentric characters. They act as musical comedic crescendos that climax in a kind of comedic apocalypse of craziness.

If you love 'em, you love 'em. If you're not on their wavelength, they often strike you as unnatural and head scratching.

For this writer though, very few things beat a great screwball comedy. They're as cinematic as any great movie.

Moviemakers Howard Hawks (TWENTIETH CENTURY, HIS GIRL FRIDAY, MONKEY BUSINESS along with BRINGING UP BABY) and Preston Sturges (SULLIVAN'S TRAVELS, THE MIRACLE AT MORGAN'S CREEK, THE LADY EVE, etc) stand as the twin giants of this subgenre. And their movies have influenced Peter Bogdonovich (WHAT'S UP DOC), the Coen Brothers (RAISING ARIZONA, THE BIG LEBOWSKI), and David O Russell (FLIRTING WITH DISASTER).

The heyday of the screwball comedy era was the 1930's. And Hawks' 1938 BRINGING UP BABY starring megawatt megastars Katherine Hepburn and Cary Grant along with an ensemble of hilarious character actors is one of the quicksilver zeniths of that period.

Grant plays zoologist David Huxley who needs just one more bone for the brontosaurus skeleton he's been working on for four years. He also needs to close a one million dollar endowment deal before he gets married to his prim fiance Alice Swallow.

But no sooner does Huxley go to play golf with a potential benefactor's lawyer then he runs into Hepburn's loopy free spirit Susan Vance who brings nothing but chaos and disaster for the rest of the picture.

When Susan discovers David is to be married to Ms. Swallow the next day, she ropes him into helping her deliver a leopard to her Aunt Elizabeth in Connecticut. And well. . .it just gets crazier from there.

The plot description alone tells you that screwball comedies veer into the absurd, surreal, uncontrollable. Like the contemporaneous 30's Marx brother comedies, screwball comedies revel in "the whole world's crazy" kind of energy. And thus paradoxically, air gets let out of the tires, we all laugh at existence's insanity, and we can all regroup to fight another day.

BRINGING UP BABY is a particular screwball standout for how much sexual innuendo Hawks and company smuggled past the censors of the era. Within the very first few minutes of the movie, we get a line of dialogue like "You tried to put the bone in the tail yesterday and it didn't fit." Then a fiance named Miss Swallow.

Later, Susan lies to her Aunt and says Cary Grant's name is Mr. Bone and we get lines like "When I go down, I go down quietly". . .

Everything with Grant revolves around his obsession with a bone and everything with Hepburn revolves around her possession of a leopard. . .a large wild cat. . .a huge. . .well you get the idea.

There's a particularly daring sequence where Hepburn and Grant are both in negligees or naked and taking showers, talking bones in boxes, and Grant even says to one startled character that he's decided to go "Gay all of a sudden!".

In the hands of 99.9% of moviemakers who would challenge themselves to get away with murder for 102 minutes, this kind of gamesmanship would tire quickly and curdle into crassness.

But somehow BRINGING UP BABY is just an exhilaration of comedic genius from start to finish.

One characteristic of great cinema is how upon 2nd or 3rd viewings, one notices that there are actually unifying themes that thread through the whole movie. Here, the themes are simple and to the point.

Grant's Huxley is buttoned up, repressed and about to enter a loveless marriage (his fiance Ms. Swallow makes clear their relationship will not involve children or anything that goes into making children. . .). Hepburn's Susan Vance introduces the very abandon and uninhibited impulsiveness he secretly desires.

Susan, for her part, is immediately attracted to David. Maybe she's attracted to his stability which she most desperately wants. So she must do everything she can to delay the marriage.

It's clear from very early on that all of this is a kind of courtship dance. Susan and David clearly are attracted to each other.

As one character says very early on, "The love impulse often expresses itself in conflict..."

Another characteristic of genius movies is often their unity of time and ability to bring everyone or everything together in the climax like the fourth movement of a great symphony. But all the themes that find their full expression in that fourth movement were established in the first movement.

Here, all the characters we meet in the first twenty minutes re-appear in the final twenty minutes in local country jail. Even smaller characters like the lawyer Mr. Peabody, the drunk groundskeeper Mr. Goerty, or the European Psychiatrist converge for a kind of curtain call.

The movie's story was written by Hagar Wilde with a great dialogue assist by brilliant screenwriter Dudley Nichols (who wrote for much of John Ford's great mid-career work).

Director Hawks has that unteachable discernment for what makes something funny, for just how far to push something, and for how to find just the right tone so broad jokes play with surprising cleverness.

The tame leopard (there are two leopards but. . .you have to see the movie) loves the song "I Can't Give You Anything But Love Baby". At one point, Grant and Hepburn sing to the leopard who is on a roof. Grant has Hepburn's dog George in his arms and the dog joins in the off key singing. Then the leopard (the bad leopard) on the roof starts caterwauling. It's such an obvious joke (they're all singing off key) but somehow it's hilarious and well set up and well executed.

Hepburn reportedly had jitters because it was her first out and out comedy and she tried too hard at first. Hawks eventually helped her to see that comedy works best when you play your character straight. Hepburn ultimately played a variation of herself and she's wonderful. Grant actually came out of vaudeville from Britain and has impeccable timing (as he always had). Cary Grant was able to play comedy, drama, action, adventure with an apparent effortlessness that never gets enough credit. His range is actually stunning.

Another great joke of the movie is that Grant's Huxley is the straight man. But Grant is so naturally adept at comedy, he finds endless variations of hilarious exasperation. Grant's ever oscillating bouts of frustration, resistance, and resignation provide a wonderful counterpoint to Hepburn's endless aria of nuttiness.

Many folks who don't like this type of movie will tell you that characters like Hepburn's zany Vance and Grant's buttoned up Huxley just don't feel like they're from the real world. And there's a near bullet proof case to be made that characters like Hepburn's Vance are to blame for the "manic pixie girl" tropes that do no real love relationships any favors.

This writer certainly has had that feeling in other movies but for some reason, BRINGING UP BABY just brings joy.

The whole movie takes place in two days (barring the final scene which takes place three days later) and a huge section of it takes place at night. This gives the whole piece a propulsive forward momentum that is unrelenting. And a kind of MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM quality.

Several of the best screwball comedies are great because they also achieve a surprising depth. Just as the Coen Brothers' RAISING ARIZONA finally is about how a childless couple do the right thing and are rewarded with renewed love for each other and possibility in the future, so too does BRINGING UP BABY finally reveal itself to be about how successful romantic partners encourage vitality in the other (rather than try to suppress it as Huxley's fiance Ms. Swallow does). And how if you love someone, you do best to accept and love them for who they are. Rather than try to make them someone they are not.

Even if it drives you a little crazy.

Craig Hammill is the founder.programmer of Secret Movie Club