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Friday, March 21, 2014

CHRISTMAS IN JULY (1940)

After breaking the Hollywood barrier that kept writers from directing their own scripts (with THE GREAT McGINTY/’40, his uproarious take-no-prisoners political satire), Preston Sturges went straight on to this more modest charmer.  A chamber-piece compared to McGINTY, it occasionally shows its origins as an unproduced play, but once it gets going . . . look out!  The Sturgean unique wit & wisdom take off in language as intricately witty & specific as G. B. Shaw or Tom Stoppard.  This is a sweetly acerbic fable, with desk jockey Dick Powell hoping to leapfrog his way to success (and marriage to Ellen Drew) by winning a big radio contest.  But when a trio of office mates punk him with a gag telegram, and Powell believes he’s won the 25-thousand Grand Prize for his goofy coffee slogan, things quickly grow out of control.  These farces of misunderstanding can grow pretty darn tiresome pretty darn quick, but Sturges keeps switching gears on you, making decent types out of the usual villains and managing to run his plot without making everyone act as if they’re deaf, dumb & blind.  The expected gang of Sturges zanies are still in chrysalis, but the corporate execs & ethnically-mixed tenement neighbors generate plenty of laughs even in this pupa stage.   A shorter than usual running time helps, too.  No one overstays their welcome.   And Raymond Walburn, a Sturges regular usually confined to backup player, effectively moves front & center playing the Chief Coffee Baron, percolating with one priceless line reading after another.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Switching from McGINTY’s William Mellor to Victor Milner as lenser for this and for three future projects @ Paramount did a lot to increase Sturges’s emotional & romantic range.  But it was the great John Seitz (on SULLIVAN’S TRAVELS/’41; MIRACLE OF MORGAN’S CREEK/’44 and HAIL THE CONQUERING HERO/’44) who’d make Sturges-the-director as brilliantly original as Sturges-the-writer.

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