Bringing up Baby (1938)

 

After a few weeks of watching films made in the past few years, it was a shock to see how accomplished Bringing Up Baby was - a film made almost ninety years ago! Remarkable too was the incredible journey of Hollywood movies from silent to sound – this film was made within a few years of the introduction of sound. Yet the whole movie is based around such exquisite dialogue! What makes it so appealing is the way all the major characters, but especially Gable and Hepburn, use hesitation, interruption, murmurs, and gesture to communicate. The quality of the print is poor, the resolution appalling, but the dialogue sparkles and is on a par with anything made today. 

The narrative is fairly simple to describe. The entire action takes place within a few days. David Huxley (Grant), a palaeontologist, is about to get married. His actions and intentions are hijacked by Susan Vance (Hepburn), who manipulates matters in seeming chaos to prevent him carrying out any of his plans, wedding included. The bulk of the film is occupied by madcap farce, involving not one, but two leopards, a big game hunter, a dog, a spell in jail, and so on. Eventually, Huxley decides he has had so much fun with Vance that he would rather marry her than his fiancée.

When you watch a farce, you willingly forego a lot of your critical attitudes. If a film or play can make me laugh and keep me laughing, I am happy to ignore problems with the plot or character. But I can’t help feeling that the underlying premiss of the film is somewhat misogynistic. A woman sets her eye on capturing a man, and stops at nothing, including stealing all his clothes and sending them off to be cleaned, to ensure her success. Anyone other than Grant (a James Bond character, for example) would not tolerate for a moment being ridiculed, dressed in a fluffy dressing gown, or falling in a lake, or being sent to jail. But although Grant is repeatedly exasperated, for the purpose of the continuing laugh, he has to go along with the lunacy. Nonetheless, it leaves a bad taste. Consider one (imaginary) reel after the end of the film, when the two are married. Hepburn has shown herself to be irresponsible (for example, a wildly dangerous driver, crashing cars repeatedly, and stealing cars without concern). This is not the sort of person you would want to marry.

This is where Grant’s character is so perfect. He is the perfect male sex symbol: tall, handsome, not a hair out of place, impeccably dressed. When a man has such incredible assets, the viewers don’t want to see too much perfection. They want to see his perfection jolted, which is why he is so often in drag, or having pratfalls, and looking ridiculous: because we all know that within a few minutes he can return to being a sex god. He has the looks that we will never have, but he’s not insufferable, and able to take a joke.

One reason for the zany, surreal air of the film was, as noticed by director Howard Hawks, “there were no normal people in it. Everyone you met was a screwball and since that time I learned my lesson.” Certainly the staggering achievement of the carefully choreographed jail scene, where at various moments Grant is inside or outside his cell without anyone (including himself) noticing, is one of the funniest moments in all cinema. Without the Will Hay-like character of Constable Slocum, that scene would have fallen flat. It’s not surprising the scene took several days to film. So inured are we to the frantic action, that by the final scene, where Hepburn destroys an entire dinosaur skeleton and is held around fifteen feet up in the air by just one arm, we take it for granted, instead of being frightened.

One other aspect of the film struck me, something that is common to much Hollywood of the thirties (and later). The emphasis by Hollywood on popular entertainment is very visible here. Although Grant is a scientist, his knowledge is  mocked and he shows no ability to deal with a leopard. Even his job, palaeontologist, is mistaken by Hepburn, who calls him a “zoologist” – as if Hepburn establishes a line in the sand above which cleverness should not go. Her cleverness is all directed at getting her man, which (in populist terms) is an OK goal. Completing a dinosaur skeleton is something quirky and not really an accomplishment. Throughout the film, the populist tone is reinforced. If, like Hepburn, you are brazen enough in your actions, like stealing a car, you can get away with it without sanction. Laws are for idiots, Hepburn seems to say; if you exist on another plane, like (for example, Elon Musk) then everyday rules can be ignored. This disturbing background didn’t detract from my enjoyment of the film, but I noted afterwards that the anarchy in the film is a rather right-wing, society-accepting anarchy. You can be wild, but you want to conform with the rich around you, and to be one of them. Your anarchy is not, in the end, revolutionary.

But let’s not get too serious. How many films could have lines like this. When Huxley finds out his precious dinosaur bone is missing, he complains:

• David Huxley: It took three expeditions and five years to find that one!
• Susan Vance: David, now that they know where to find one, couldn't you send them back to get another one?