Plot Intro
The Sycamore family, headed by the maternal Grandfather, Martin Vanderhof (Lionel Barrymore), are a happy but downright bonkers middle-class family living a life of fun, happiness and freedom. Meanwhile, the Kirby family, headed by Anthony P. Kirby (Edward Arnold), are basically the Trump clan- living a life of opulence, dignity and consumed by wealth, power and snobbery. However, the granddaughter of Martin Vanderhof, Alice Sycamore (Jean Arthur) has fallen in love with the son and heir of Anthony Kirby, Tony Kirby (James Stewart), and it’s about time both families discovered the truth…
Doug says...
What’s most interesting about this film for me is that it comes three years after the director Frank Capra’s superb It Happened One Night, and many years before his hugely famous It’s A Wonderful Life. And yet, it is easy to see how Capra is shifting his directorial focus from the witty screwball comedy of One Night and edging already towards the saccharine-drenched style of Wonderful Life. There are scenes in You Can’t Take It With You which are direct predecessors to crucial plot points in Wonderful Life, and the plot spins around the same theme - that friends are forever while money is ultimately unimportant.
All this is dandy, except for the fact that Capra-esque films tend to nauseate rather than move (I found It’s A Wonderful Life dull and without any genuine ability to inspire emotion, thanks to its constant on-the-nose message). It Happened One Night managed blissfully to escape this plastering-on of ‘emotion’, mainly thanks to its rough and ready plot and the dry sparkling wit of its two lead actors. However - and here’s the interesting thing - because Capra has not reached full-Capra with this film, there are still moments that actually are quite affecting. It helps that the plot is not really about the two young lovers at the centre of the story, but actually about their respective fathers - one of whom is Lionel Barrymore playing Martin Vanderhof - a kind, friendly man who cares more about friends than money. Barrymore has a lot of big speeches about capitalism and communism, and at one point a tirade about dying alone and friendless being all that awaits some people. But unlike last week’s The Life of Emile Zola, Barrymore has enough talent and energy to push through these and ensure they don’t become mawkish.
The real heart of Take It With You’s success however for me lay with Edward Arnold, an actor who apparently infuriated Capra with his inability to learn his lines, (this is despite Capra’s film technique of often getting actors to improvise their scenes a la Mike Leigh). We slowly (and it’s a beautifully paced change) get to see the rich banker Anthony P. Kirby realise how he has grasped for the wrong thing in life. A scene, late on in the film, has Arnold sitting still, saying very little, and yet managing to deliver an astonishing performance. It comes as no surprise then that Capra, despite being irritated by Arnold’s poor memory, still referred to him as being ‘a powerhouse on the screen’. There’s sentimental daftness - a daughter of the Sycamore family who dementedly insists on ballet dancing around the house, and a mother who uses kittens as paperweights for her dreadful-sounding novel transcripts. But overall the gawky sentimentality that would later overpower Capra’s work - and is mercifully absent in his greatest work It Happened One Night, isn’t allowed to dominate here.
Highlight
Edward Arnold’s measured and powerful transformation from corrupt banker to a man of harmonica-playing joviality is superb.
Lowlight
Jean Arthur and James Stewart (later to win an Oscar for The Philadelphia Story) don’t really have the acting chops to de-sentimentalise their long drawn-out love story. It’s where the film tips towards laughable rather than emotional.
Mark
5.5/10
How on earth did they come up with the title to this one? “We need a really memorable, punchy title that looks great in neon!” “Why don’t we just put 6 of the most common English words together?” “PERFECT!”
Last week’s Emile Zola was a real-life parable. You Can’t Take It With You covers similar love-affirming, corruption-of-power-hating territory but it’s made-up, and so, as Doug points out, the result is more idealised and sentimental. Frank Capra’s next film, Mr Smith Goes to Washington, also starring James Stewart, would be very similar but with a stronger political stance, rather than a family-based one.
However, unlike Doug, I was much more captivated by it. I loved the Sycamore family. A Grandfather who breaks his foot sliding down the bannister, a mother who writes atrocious plays, a father who illicitly makes fireworks, a daughter who desperately wants to dance despite having two left feet, and a son-in-law whose one talent is playing the xylophone. There’s also a pet raven, some sassy servants and a Russian dance teacher/wrestler thrown into the mix to create the sort of joyous, anarchic, socially-inept family that everyone aspires to. The ensemble scenes (in particular when the Sycamores meet the ultra-capitalist, adamantine Kirbys, and wind up in a jail cell together) are fast-paced, inventive and fun. So much so, that the central love story becomes pedestrian and uninteresting in comparison, and Stewart and Arthur are entirely overshadowed by Barrymore and Arnold.
Like Emile Zola, this film tackles the late-30’s political climate more manifestly. The Kirbys represent the ambitious, avaricious, pseudo-patriotic upper echelons who ruined society’s welfare and inadvertently aided the rise of fascism. The Sycamores are one last attempt to remember humanity, and a frightened audience of 1938 would have supported them no-end. It’s not dissimilar to the values purported by Pixar in Up and The Incredibles. There were many times when I felt pangs of happiness and fear for the Sycamores, but beneath that veneer a modern eye can see some contrivance. It is revealed that the family patriarch does not pay his taxes- an act which, in 1938, may well have been inspirational but to me came across as selfish and overly-eristic.
Another downside is that the film climaxes with an emotional courtroom scene (I say again, who DOESN’T love a climactic courtroom scene), one that could have tied up all characters and storylines in a very Shakespearean way, but then ambles on for another 45 minutes or so.
But despite this, I laughed plenty of times, I empathised with the characters, and while Take It With You may be over-idealised, it still has important lessons of friendship and solidarity that many of our most predatory entrepreneurs and politicians should learn.
Highlight
The Sycamores have a “Home Sweet Home” sign that keeps falling down, but no matter what, someone always puts it back up. A lovely, subtle symbol of their resilience.
Lowlight
The film goes on 30-45 minutes too long. A quick re-write could have made it shorter and sweeter.
Mark
8/10
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