Real-life divorced couple William Powell and Carole Lombard flirt with a possible romance in depression-eara screwball comedy MY MAN GODFREY
MY MAN GODFREY (Gregory La Cava, 1936)
BAMcinématek, BAM Rose Cinemas
30 Lafayette Ave. between Ashland Pl. & St. Felix St.
Thursday, August 9, 6:50 & 9:15
Series runs August 8 – September 17
212-415-5500
www.bam.org
After more than three quarters of a century, Gregory La Cava’s screwball comedy My Man Godfrey is still fresh and funny and surprisingly relevant as it takes on the one percent during tough economic times. William Powell stars as the title character, a down-on-his-luck aristocrat living with a group of lost souls in a city dump under a bridge when a pair of ritzy sisters, Cornelia (Gail Patrick) and Irene (Carole Lombard) Bullock, suddenly show up, looking for a “forgotten man” as part of a scavenger hunt. Godfrey soon finds himself working as a butler for the fabulously wealthy Bullocks, where he makes snide comments under his breath while serving Cornelia and Irene and their parents, successful businessman Alexander (Eugene Pallette) and his free-spending wife, Angelica (Alice Brady), who flits about with young plaything Carlo (Mischa Auer). The Oscar-nominated script by Eric Hatch and Morrie Ryskind is as sharp as a knife, skewering high society in myriad ways without getting heavy-handed. “All you need to start an asylum is an empty room and the right kind of people,” Alexander points out. But Godfrey sums it all up when he explains, “The only difference between a derelict and a man is a job.” Powell and Lombard, who divorced three years earlier after two years of marriage, are magical, lighting up the screen every time they’re together, beautifully mixing comedy and romance. The film was the first to earn Oscar nominations in all the main categories, with Powell up for Best Actor, Lombard Best Actress, Auer Best Supporting Actor, and Brady Best Supporting Actress, along with a nod for La Cava as Best Director. It somehow got snubbed for Outstanding Production, a list of ten films that featured such memorable movies as Libeled Lady and Three Smart Girls. One of the best depression-era tales to come out of Hollywood, My Man Godfrey is screening August 9 in the BAMcinématek series “American Gagsters: Great Comedy Teams,” which runs August 8 – September 17 and includes fifty films (all but one in 35mm), beginning with The Thin Man with Powell and Myrna Loy and continuing with such other classic duos as Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis in Some Like It Hot, Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn in Pat and Mike and Adam’s Rib, Abbott and Costello in Buck Privates and In the Navy, Joel McCrea and Claudette Colbert in The Palm Beach Story, the Marx Brothers in Monkey Business and Horse Feathers, and multiple films starring Cary Grant, Woody Allen, Peter Sellers, Steve Martin, and Bill Murray.