La critique d'Avoir à lire(fin)

On le voit, du point de vue politique, la ligne choisie tient plus du coup de griffe moralisant que de l’engagement. On a plaisir à voir attaquer les impôts (délicieuse scène de sa justification), mais tout se termine par une prière et, somme toute, un retour à l’ordre. Ce qui importe, c’est l’humain et l’amour. Reste que les dialogues savoureux, l’impeccable scénario de l’habituel complice Robert Riskin, l’interprétation hors-pair d’acteurs au sommet de leur art (outre ceux cités plus haut, il faut souligner la prestation de Stewart en amoureux transi), la sobre mise en scène de Capra, font de Vous ne l’emporterez pas avec vous une rêverie tendre et drôle, infiniment poétique, et qui se déguste avec des yeux d’enfants.

La critique de Witney Seibold (part1)

Some context: in 1938, America was still feeling the effects of the Great Depression. The government wasn’t to be trusted, economics was a lie, and anyone who managed to hang onto their wealth was morally suspect. And while amoral rich bastards have been a stock dramatic character for, gosh, centuries, the modern version of that character was codified in movies like You Can’t Take It With You. In Frank Capra’s famous movie, the heroes refuse to pay taxes, and the wealthy characters are seen as stuffy, lifeless buffoons. The “evil rich” will be a common notion in many Best Picture winners, and will be used to most famous effect in Citizen Kane, a little flick from 1941 you may have heard of. So if the heroes of Capra’s film seem irresponsible and childish to a modern audience (they refuse to pay taxes?), know that they are actually intended to be heroic, bold, free-thinking wild spirits.

You Can’t Take It With You is shamelessly sentimental. It’s about blissful liberty overcoming corporate cynicism. It’s about everything working out in the end. It’s about how love, romance, and inventiveness are definitely better than wealth, status, and ambition. Even the title is a lesson to the audience. And it’s all told with a relatively heavy hand. But since it was made by Frank Capra – who essentially invented film sentimentality – you forgive a lot of it. Capra, who I previously wrote about in Best Picture: It Happened One Night (1934), was a master on-screen humanity. He had a knack for casting actors and exploiting situations for every last bit of their halcyon, sweet, romantic powers. These days, the word “sentimentality” is a bit of a cuss. When talking about Capra, it’s a compliment....

La critique de Witney Seibold (part1)

You Can’t Take It With You is largely a Romeo &Juliet story, about young lovers from differing castes who want to marry. The immortal Jimmy Stewart (who would work regularly with not only Capra, but rising star Alfred Hitchcock) plays a calm, soft-spoken rich boy named Tony Kirby, the uncharacteristically laid-back son of the wound-up, wealthy banker Anthony P. Kirby (Edward Arnold from The Devil and Daniel Webster). Kirby, Sr. has plans to buy out a local neighborhood and replace it with a brand new, ultra-spiffy neighborhood. All he has to do it buy up one final property. If that story sounds familiar, it should; it’s been used in hundreds of movies since. It was even a plot point in the recent Brick Mansions.

And who should own that property but Martin Vanderhoff (Lionel Barrymore from Grand Hotel)? Martin is eternally bemused by the world. He walks around on crutches because he was dared to slide down a bannister. His personal interests skew toward hugs and harmonicas. His home is a bustling hodgepodge of inventors, musicians, dancers, and artists. His relatives make toys and firecrackers for a living. Early in the film, Martin adopts one of Kirby’s accountants (Donald Meek) to join their little ragtag family of inventors because the accountant has invented one of the damn cutest toys I’ve ever seen: it’s a mechanical bunny that pops up out of an Easter egg. It also just so happens that Martin’s feisty daughter Alice (Jean Arthur) is engaged to Tony Kirby, their romance having been carried out largely in secret before the film begins.