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July 19, 2005
The Palm Beach Story
Princess: Oh I love you like this, with lightning flashing out of your eyes.
For quite some time, my two favorite funny movies have been The Awful Truth (1937) and The Palm Beach Story (1942). I have never been able to put one ahead of the other in a list, and the movie in third place - well, I don't know what the movie in third place is. How about a tie between Bringing Up Baby (1938) and its remake, What's Up, Doc? (1972)? My two favorites have a few things in common - they've both about rich people, for one thing - but they're really very different. The Awful Truth takes place entirely in well-appointed rooms, an imposing court, and a fantastical night club. The Palm Beach Story takes place very largely outdoors and on the move - on a train, on a plane, on a yacht, and even in the driveway. The soundtrack, which is full of tongue-in-cheek quotations from the classics, gives the movie a musical feeling, and Rudy Vallee actually sings. (And one of the things that he sings, briefly, is that Paramount inevitability, "Isn't It Romantic?") The Awful Truth limits itself to two musical items, "Home on the Range" and "Gone With The Wind," a novelty number not directly inspired by Miss Mitchell's opus. And where The Awful Truth portrays rich people as they're conventionally imagined by Hollywood, The Palm Beach Story is insider information, written from the standpoint of someone very familiar with the high life - as writer, director, and producer Preston Sturges was - and altogether unconcerned with whether the mass audience "gets it."
Finally, what sets The Palm Beach Story apart from nearly every other picture ever made is that it is an adventure story in which a woman has the adventure. That being the case, the movie offers not space ships and secret passwords but no end of sexual innuendo.
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Posted by pourover at July 19, 2005 12:00 AM
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