Fri 25 Nov 2016
Movie Review: SHE COULDN’T TAKE IT (1935).
Posted by Steve under Films: Drama/Romance , Reviews[11] Comments
SHE COULDN’T TAKE IT. Columbia Pictures, 1935. George Raft, Joan Bennett, Walter Connolly, Billie Burke, Lloyd Nolan, Wallace Ford, James Blakeley, Alan Mowbray, Donald Meek. Director: Tay Garnett.
Like the definition of film noir, and perhaps even more so, the concept of the screwball comedy has always been nebulous to me. Some films definitely fall in the category, beginning perhaps with It Happened One Night (1934), while other comedies are most clearly not. She Couldn’t Take It, as the case at hand, I’m going to say is; that is to say, if categories are important.
What the film most definitely is not, is a classic. The members of a screwball family make the headlines so often with their upper class escapades and spending habits that the father (Walter Connolly as patriarch Daniel Van Dyke) would rather go to prison than have to deal with their debts any longer.
And jail, as it turns out, suits him well, and it is where he meets former bootlegger and racketeer Spot Ricardi (George Raft), whom be befriends and on his deathbed, makes hm the guardian of the family. The comedy comes into full play then, and so does the romance, as Ricardi falls in love with daughter Carol Van Dyke, most fetchingly played by a young and very lovely Joan Bennett.
The criminous aspect of this film comes when Carol, in order to have some money to spend, arranges with a rival of Ricardi’s (Lloyd Nolan) to have herself kidnapped so she and he can split the ransom. Naturally things do not work out nearly as well as she planned. Very badly, in fact.
What takes place on the screen during this movie is obviously very contrived and the story does not flow as well as it should as a result, but as I say, Joan Bennett is always worth watching, and even George Raft turns in a performance in which he seems to be much more relaxed than he was in later films. Available on YouTube for free (see below), at least for now, this is far from being a “must see” film, but you may find as many moments worth watching as I did.
November 25th, 2016 at 1:48 pm
Terms such as screwball comedies and film noir have been misused so often to almost reduced both terms to being worthless. Such terms are important to academics and critics to create groups for discussion, and librarians and merchants so they know how to display them for readers/viewers to be able to find fiction of similar style.
Have not seen it yet but I guess it has eccentric characters, an unbelievable plot, and absurd action all played for laughs.
November 25th, 2016 at 2:03 pm
You’re right on all three counts, Michael. But Three Stooges shorts have all three ingredients, too, and I don’t think anyone regards those as screwball comedies.
Looking for a definition online, I didn’t really find one, but one component most websites say should be included is a romantic conflict, a battle between the sexes, or a gap between class levels that must be overcome. If so, than this movie qualifies.
And the Three Stooges don’t.
November 25th, 2016 at 2:04 pm
Here’s the page I was last looking at:
http://www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/news-bfi/lists/10-great-screwball-comedies
November 25th, 2016 at 2:29 pm
This film has an all star cast, notably Walter Connolly who get very little love today, but who was truly an important character actor in the thirties. I suppose that he died in 1940 is at least in part the reason, but in the review Steve mentioned It Happened One Night, and Connolly is quite an important figure in that picture. Add in Billie Burke, Alan Mowbray and Lloyd Nolan into the mix, and it is easy to understand why this picture was fairly well received upon its initial release.
November 25th, 2016 at 2:50 pm
TVTropes has a much longer and more inclusive list of Screwball Comedies than either the BFI or the Wikipedia:
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ScrewballComedy
One suspects that there are other examples too.
The term is indeed quite vague.
“My Man Godfrey” and “Bringing Up Baby” are perhaps the two films most often cited as Screwball.
November 25th, 2016 at 5:41 pm
One side comment about this movie is that it is one of a select few that use the Chinese finger trap as a crucial plot device.
Wikipedia lists a fw others:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_finger_trap
including the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “The Last Outpost”, in which Lt. Commander Data is stumped by the device.
November 25th, 2016 at 7:45 pm
I like George Raft myself, but I have to say his wit and comic timing could be compared to those of Richard Nixon.
November 25th, 2016 at 10:27 pm
I thought Richard Nixon was pretty funny.
November 26th, 2016 at 1:27 am
Film genres are like porn. You know them when you see them.
Tay Garnett, who directed this, had a major impact on Joan Bennett’s career when he had her dye her hair dark in TRADE WINDS. Before that she was just another blonde ingenue. After that she was a star.
This sounds a bit Damon Runyonesque, which is quite another genre than screwball, though related.
The classic definition of screwball is that it pokes fun at the eccentricity of the rich.and powerful while exhorting the virtues of the average Joe or Jane, though the definition has been extended to fit any comedy featuring certain actors. It was never just about zany (the Stooges, Marx Brothers, Abbott and Costello), but always included a level of social commentary, but could go pretty far afield as in ONCE UPON A HONEYMOON where Cary Grant and Ginger Rogers are in Europe at the outbreak of the war and at one point narrowly escape forced sterilization.
November 26th, 2016 at 3:00 am
The problems with genres is writers keep mixing them together. The Three Stooges are slapstick while the Marx Brothers has elements of slapstick but more surreal.
Definitions of genres can change as the styles change over time. In the early part of the 20th Century cartoon artists such as Milt Gross was considered a screwball cartoonist, today we would probably used the word absurdist.
Daffy Duck features screwball humor.
But the film definition is most commonly used in a romantic comedy with fast pace dialog. There is one straight “normal” character (Cary Grant in Bringing Up Baby) and one nutty and in love with the other (Katherine Hepburn in Bringing Up Baby).Women are often the ones chasing the man. They hate each other in the beginning and love through hate wins all. The story forces the characters to deal with events as the World around them goes out of control to comedic extremes. Elements of the film (the tiger in Bringing Up Baby) are absurdly over the top. This form was used for writers to get past the censorship of the era with the Hays Code and various states censorship boards. Screwball comedies were the sex comedies of its day (1930s-50s). Without censorship the ability to express stories featuring sex left the devices of the romantic screwball comedies no longer needed.
This does not mean screwball humor -over the top silliness – does not still exist.
While Capra’s It Happened One Night is considered one of the first and best, I found Howard Hawk to have directed the best screwball comedies including Twentieth Century, His Girl Friday, Bringing Up Baby and Monkey Business.
My favorite is the crime screwball comedy Mad Miss Manton. I reviewed here: https://mysteryfile.com/blog/?p=7473 where the comments discussed screwball comedies as well.
November 26th, 2016 at 6:29 pm
I think that very five or six years it’s safe to bring up the topic again. I enjoyed the conversation then, and I did once again now. Thanks everyone!