My Man Godfrey (1936)
Directed by Gregory La Cava
Fifth Avenue socialite Irene Bullock needs a "forgotten man" to win a scavenger hunt, and no one is more forgotten than Godfrey Park, who resides in a dump by the East River. Irene hires Godfrey as a servant for her riotously unhinged family, to the chagrin of her spoiled sister, Cornelia, who tries her best to get Godfrey fired. As Irene falls for her new butler, Godfrey turns the tables and teaches the frivolous Bullocks a lesson or two.
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What critics compared My Man Godfrey to
At one point, a TV is switched on, and the movie that’s showing—“My Man Godfrey,” the great screwball comedy about poverty and wealth, from 1936—is now staffed by the same creatures who populate the rest of “Anomalisa.”
After one last encounter with this love of his life, he returns to his room to view a moment of movie ecstasy on television—the finale of My Man Godfrey (1936) with a gaga Carole Lombard, dancing in happiness.
The production design is exquisite, and there are several delightful details, such as the puppet version of black and white classic My Man Godfrey playing on the hotel TV.
Michael is in Cincinnati for one day on business, and his depression is ingeniously illustrated by the fact that all the other characters save one have the exact same voice (Tom Noonan’s) and face, including Michael’s wife, his unstable ex-girlfriend, his young son, the airline pilot, an oblivious cabdriver, and even the actors in the 1936 movie My Man Godfrey, which plays on a TV in his hotel room.
Lo más interesante es ver cómo situaciones abiertamente deprimentes tienen siempre aquí un contrapunto humorístico, y cómo para enfatizarlo, o sugerirlo maliciosamente, la pantalla de televisión en el hotel muestra una escena de la comedia delirante Porfiada Irene (My Man Godfrey, La Cava, 1936), pero en lugar de Powell o Lombard, intervienen clones de las fantásticas criaturas de Charlie Kaufman.
And Michael's tired routines — phone home, dial room service, practice his speech, go down the hall for ice, watch a snippet of My Man Godfrey (also animated) on TV — begin to take on a strange profundity in their bleak ordinariness.
Tiffany may not really be a lot more than a variation on, most obviously, Carole Lombard’s dizzy rich girl in My Man Godfrey (1936), but the character has more depth — and more pain — than you see in that earlier form.
There are some, like “Down and Out in Beverly Hills” and “My Man Godfrey,” but, still, not exactly a popular subject.
Some critics are savaging Nancy Meyers' "It's Complicated" for being wealth porn in an era of economic downturn, but that hardly seems fair -- would you have denied Depression-era audiences such love-among-the-mega-rich spectacles as "Midnight" (1939) or "My Man Godfrey" (1936)?
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At least Depression-era rich-girl comedies like "My Man Godfrey" remembered the forgotten man; this one can't even remember to ask for the check.
It felt bizarre to hear the media gaggle, assembled at Parasite ’s press screening, chuckle and giggle as the devious Kim family put their nefarious scheme over on the gullible Parks, laughing as if watching a topsy-turvy version of My Man Godfrey .
The Lady Eve is a relatively late addition to the screwball canon, and although it contains many of the same elements as earlier films like Bringing Up Baby , It Happened One Night , My Man Godfrey and others, its mood is a little darker than its predecessors.