Since I've been doing a better job, lately, of starting work in the early afternoon (rather than at, say, 8 p.m.), I've had more free time in the evenings. I try to go out with friends a few nights a week, but on the evenings that I'm home I've been enjoying working my way through a bunch of DVDs.
Because I don't like to plan these screenings ahead of time (i.e., to assume that I'll actually be done working and in the mood to watch a movie), I've mostly been watching movies that I own and therefore have seen before; some are quite recent, some are much older, and there's a certain variety of genres, plotlines, etc. But over the last week or so, these are the ones I've chosen:
The Philadelphia Story
His Girl Friday
The Awful Truth
Only today did I realize the pattern here. (And no, that pattern is not Cary Grant.)
7 comments:
Oh, that's an easy pattern: books that Stanley Cavell has written brilliantly about. Or, if you wanna get technical, we could call them comedies of remarriage.
And really, couldn't the pattern be Cary Grant? It's such a good pattern.
Well, Scriv handily set the land-speed record on this one (although I'm willing to consider alternate possible patterns--get 'em in!).
I haven't read Cavell's book, although I've been meaning to do so; it was the remarriage plot itself that I was thinking of.
(Boy. I wonder what that's all about. . .)
My favorite comedy of remarriage is My Favorite Wife. And it fits the Cary Grant theme as well!
Ooh! Must go rent. Thanks for the rec.
Funny, I just saw His Girl Friday! Loved it, but love Philadelphia Story better (because the chemistry's more there). But I still haven't found anything that holds a candle to Trouble in Paradise and Lubitsch's Design for Living (forget Coward; it's all screwball pre-Hayes code era comedy). Preston Sturges comes close, of course. The Lady Eve is my favorite of his (Barbara Stanwyck as a con artist!)
And Sturges "Palm Beach Story" is also a great comedy of remarriage.
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