Screwball Comedies
Prepare for three of the funniest nights of your lives…
All SHOWS start at 6pm (5:30 for pre-SHOW reception) and are FREE TO ALL. For more information, please contact Erika Gordon at erika.moss.gordon@gmail.com
Monday, June 4, 2012
TROUBLE IN PARADISE (1932, 83 min): “The most sophisticated of all American romantic comedies.” – Salon.com. Generally considered to be director Ernst Lubitch’s masterpiece – A romantic triangle and tale of deceit about two thieves Gaston (Herbert Marshall) and Lily (Miriam Hopkins) who join forces to con Madame Colet (Kay Francis), a gorgeous perfume company owner. “They live in a movie world of exquisite costumes, flawless grooming, butlers, grand hotels in Venice, penthouses in Paris, cocktails, evening dress, wall safes, sweeping staircases, nightclubs, the opera and jewelry, a lot of jewelry,” wrote Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun Times, “What is curious is how real they manage to seem, in the midst of the foppery.”
and…
MY MAN GODFREY (1936, 95 min): Nominated for six Oscars, and “one of the treasures of 1930’s screwball comedy,” wrote Roger Ebert of director Gregory La Cava’s masterpiece, it “doesn’t merely use Lombard and Powell, it loves them.” During a socialite scavenger hunt, Irene (Carole Lombard) wins a contest to see who can find a ‘forgotten man’ when she brings home the homeless man she found living at the city dump. She takes a liking to the down-and-out Godfrey (William Powell) and hires him as the family butler, but Godfrey turns out to be far more than anyone originally expected.
Monday, July 2, 2012
THE AWFUL TRUTH (1937, 91 min): Oscar-winner for Best Director, Leo McCarey’s film features Cary Grant and Irene Dunne as Jerry and Lucy Warriner, a high society couple whose marriage is on the rocks. As they begin divorce proceedings, the couple undermines the other’s attempts to find new romance. “It took the crackbrained genius of Leo McCarey to completely transform the attractive romantic couple from not just good-looking people who traded funny quips, but good-looking people who traded funny quips and fell on their asses.” – Filmcritic.com
and…
IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT (1934, 105 min): Frank Capra’s five time Academy Award winner is one of three films in history to capture a victory in each of the five major Oscar categories (Picture, Director, Actor, Actress, Screenplay), along with ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest’ and ‘The Silence of the Lambs.’ Featuring Clark Gable as Peter and Claudette Cobert as Ellie – the film follows an heiress and a newspaper reporter as they fall into an unlikely romance. “Gable and Colbert exhibit perfect chemistry, the screenplay turned out to have more substance than either initially expected, and the resulting production was magical.” – James Berardinelli, Reel Reviews.
Monday, August 6, 2012
BALL OF FIRE (1941, 111 min): Directed by Howard Hawks with screenplay by Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett, this four-time Oscar nominated film features Barbara Stanwyk as Sugarpuss O’Shea, a burlesque dancer on the run from the law, and Gary Cooper as Professor Bertram Potts. A professor of language, Potts meets the beautiful O’Shea because he wants to hear how real people talk, but finds himself falling for her. As he attempts to help her avoid police and escape from the mob, he realizes that before meeting her “the only thing I could care for deeply…was a well-constructed sentence.”
and…
THE MIRACLE OF MORGAN’S CREEK (1944, 98 min): Director Preston Sturges’ Oscar nominated film tells the tale of small-town girl, Trudy Kockenlocker (Betty Hutton), who wakes up to find herself married and pregnant, but with no memory of her husband’s identity, after an all-night party with a group of soldiers headed overseas. In regard to his film challenging the Hays Production Code of the era (at which he takes many jabs in the film), Sturges says in his memoir, “I wanted to show what happens to young girls who disregard their parents’ advice and who confuse patriotism with promiscuity. As I do not work in a church, I tried to adorn my sermon with laughter so that people would go to see the picture instead of staying away from it.”
