{"id":612,"date":"2008-08-06T17:03:42","date_gmt":"2008-08-06T21:03:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/?p=612"},"modified":"2008-08-06T17:03:42","modified_gmt":"2008-08-06T21:03:42","slug":"you-cant-take-it-with-you-1938-frank-capra","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/archives\/612","title":{"rendered":"You Can&#8217;t Take It With You (1938, Frank Capra)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Made in the middle of Capra&#8217;s streak of sincere, goodhearted dramas, a couple years before he ramped up for the war propaganda machine.  I was excited to see this because I love Robbie Fulks&#8217; song about loving Jean Arthur, but I didn&#8217;t end up loving the movie&#8217;s Jean Arthur more than I love the song <em>Jean Arthur<\/em>.  Maybe Robbie was watching <em>A Foreign Affair<\/em>, or <em>Shane<\/em>, or a different Capra film.<\/p>\n<p>A corporate-greed movie, pretty funny for a self-important serious-issues drama, but still feels a tad long and obvious.  Jimmy Stewart is in love with his secretary Jean Arthur, but their parents disapprove.  Jimmy&#8217;s very rich &#038; proper dad owns the huge business of which Jimmy is vice-president, and Jean&#8217;s dad (Lionel Barrymore) is a giddy eccentric who lives in a house where everyone does whatever they please (which mostly means dancing and making fireworks).  Ends up in jail, then in court, with Barrymore&#8217;s lifestyle on trial.  Can the stuffy rich people learn to lighten up just a bit, and can the nutty eccentrics learn to conform just a bit, so that their star-crossed lover children can be happy?  Of course!<\/p>\n<p>Lionel Barrymore is swell as the good-hearted old commie, but better is Donald Meek as a formerly repressed corporate bookkeeper who goes to live in Barrymore&#8217;s house, gleefully inventing and exploding things.  Also cool is Russian dance instructor Mischa Auer (seen almost twenty years later in my second-to-last screenshot in <a href=\"http:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/archives\/167\">Mr. Arkadin<\/a>) whose strict manner clashes comically with the rest of the Barrymore house.<\/p>\n<p>Lionel Barrymore (right, of Tod Browning and Lubitsch movies, later in <em>Duel in the Sun<\/em> and <em>Key Largo<\/em>) shames Edward Arnold (left, in the movies since 1916, played Webster in <em>The Devil and Daniel Webster<\/em>)<br \/>\n<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/image08\/youcanttakeit1.jpg\" alt=\"image\"><\/p>\n<p><em>Donald Meek is charmed by Lionel Barrymore:<\/em><br \/>\n<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/image08\/youcanttakeit2.jpg\" alt=\"image\"><\/p>\n<p>Small-headed Mischa Auer with God&#8217;s Jean Arthur.<br \/>\n<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/image08\/youcanttakeit3.jpg\" alt=\"image\"><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Made in the middle of Capra&#8217;s streak of sincere, goodhearted dramas, a couple years before he ramped up for the war propaganda machine. I was excited to see this because I love Robbie Fulks&#8217; song about loving Jean Arthur, but I didn&#8217;t end up loving the movie&#8217;s Jean Arthur more than I love the song [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[343,506,505],"class_list":["post-612","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie","tag-1930s","tag-frank-capra","tag-invention"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/612","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=612"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/612\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":662,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/612\/revisions\/662"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=612"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=612"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=612"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}