Bringing Up Baby

I wrote this review because a special restored edition of the film had been released by Warner Home Video though I wrote it the week it came out it took a bit before it finally made it to the web. The special edition two disk release of the film includes the digitally remastered film with commentary by writer/director Peter Bogdanovich, a movie trailer gallery of Howard Hawks movies, two documentaries, one about Cary Grant and one about director Howard Hawks, and two shorts.

Bringing Up Baby released in 1938 single-handedly defined the genre of screwball comedy and restarted the flagging career of Katharine Hepburn. Not much more needs to be added than that but I will try to flesh things out a bit. The film is completely crazy and jumps from bizarre situation to bizarre situation but yet it is able to maintain its logic and sense. Think Clockwork Orange but with less gloom and doom, more plot, and less nudity.

The film centers on David Huxley, played by a marvelously confused Cary Grant. David is a paleontologist who is at a turning point in his buttoned down repressed life. He is just about to get the last bone to finish his brontosaurus, he is about to get a big grant, and he is about to get married. These three things seem fairly straightforward and easy but they all fall apart when he runs into, almost literally, socialite Susan Vance. Susan is a happy-go-lucky heiress without a serious thought in her head played remarkably by the scattered and overjoyed Katharine Hepburn. The two embark on a series of unforgettable misadventures including the often copied scene of the two walking out of a posh restaurant lockstep one in front of the other to cover up that she has lost the back of her dress.

The scatterbrained Susan falls immediately in love with the restrained doctor and the sustained string of calamities is as a result of her increasingly exotic attempts to keep David around. Among these is the Baby of the title, a domesticated leopard whom Susan has charge of and who seems to get lose in New York and later in Connecticut an awful lot. Now since this movie has been around for a while and since it has been considered a classic much of the movie has been broken down and psychoanalyzed for sub context on leopards and natural force versus brain and the ego but I suggest you throw all of those guides aside at least for the first few viewings and just watch for the pure enjoyment.

At the time of the film’s release Hepburn had been labeled box office poison and was finding it difficult to find work. She had started off strong in Hollywood in the early 30s but her difficult and demanding nature coupled with a series of box office flops had made her nearly unemployable. Part of her appeal in the role was that audiences enjoyed seeing her knocked down a peg, acting inane and being knocked in the mud. Equally Grant is far more restrained and inept than his usually suave character playing the straight, if somewhat confused, man in the most silly of situations. I think my favorite part of Grant’s is when he is dressed in a pink bathrobe being held hostage in Connecticut by Susan who has sent all of his clothes to the cleaners. When asked why he is standing around in a robe he responds with zeal ‘Because I just went gay all of a sudden!’ and then proceeds to stomp on Susan’s foot and demand that all of the other characters behave in a more sane fashion.
Now there are a few people who don’t like this movie because they think the things that Susan does are self-centered and cruel but she explains this away as doing anything that came into her head. I think they may be over reading the film. This is a fun film but it has also been analyzed to pieces for its portrayal of the duplicity of human nature. On one hand there is David and Susan. David is the ego, restrained to the point of repression while Susan represents the Id operating purely on impulse. In the same way there is Baby, the domesticated an kindly leopard and there is a second leopard roaming the Connecticut countryside, this one an escapee from a local circus set for destruction for mauling a man. If you follow the fate of the people and of the leopards too closely you may miss out on the fun of the ride, but I already mentioned that.

The best part of this film is the parts that were written for these two characters. Unfortunately Hollywood doesn’t seem to be able to make this sort of comedy much anymore. The dialogue is witty and riposte. The interaction between Hepburn and Grant is ideal and they have the skill and the words to make the most out of the visual comedy when it appears. Too often nowadays the physical comedy is given free reign and the characters don’t have a witty remark through the whole film. I heartily recommend this film for anyone who wants to watch a silly escapist screwball comedy of the finest caliber. Of course if you want to see even more classic comedies from the Golden Age of Hollywood check out the newly released Comedy Classics box set which includes other gems like The Philadelphia Story, and Dinner at Eight.