Bringing Up Baby (1938)

In this article, we will be looking at 2019’s book “1001 Movies to See Before You Die” and going through each film in a random order that I have chosen. We will be looking at what constitutes this film to be on the list and whether I think this film deserves to be here at all. I want to make perfectly clear that I won’t be revealing details from this book such as analyses by film reporters who have written about the film in question, so if you want the book itself you’ll have to buy it. But I will be covering the book’s suggestions on which films should be your top priority. I wouldn’t doubt for a second that everyone reading this article has probably watched many of these movies anyway. But we are just here to have a bit of fun. We’re going to not just look at whether it should be on this list but we’re also going to look at why the film has such a legacy at all. Remember, this is the 2019 version of the book and so, films like “Joker” will not be featured in this book and any film that came out in 2020 (and if we get there, in 2021). So strap in and if you have your own suggestions then don’t hesitate to email me using the address in my bio. Let’s get on with it then.

Bringing Up Baby (1938) dir. by Howard Hawks

I think that "Bringing Up Baby" can honestly be described as the all-American Screwball Comedy. There is something really funny that endures about this comedy every single time I see it and apart from being a big fan of Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant, I also think that there is reason to watch this film because of its unusual storyline and comedic timing.

I think that Peter Swaab explained the summary of the film well enough in his book on the film:

"Directed by Howard Hawks in 1938, Bringing Up Baby is one of the great screwball comedies and a treasure from the Golden Age of Hollywood. Cary Grant plays a naive and repressed professor who becomes entangled with (and ensnared by) a wilful heiress played by Katharine Hepburn. Chaos ensues as romance blossoms and not one but two leopards are set loose in verdant Connecticut. As well as being a thoroughly American fiction of the 1930s, Bringing Up Baby also has a classical comic narrative, exploring conflicts between civilization and nature, rationality and insanity or eccentricity, middle-class inhibitions and aristocratic blitheness. It is an anthology of comic types and devices, and one of the most seductively funny films ever made..."

To be honest, "Bringing Up Baby" even though it had a commercial strain through it being reputed as a box office flop the film tended to do well in some states after its release at the Golden Gate Theatre in San Francisco. This also led to a controversial article about Katharine Hepburn being published by the President of Independent Cinema called "Box Office Poison".

But the most cryptic statement about the film I have seen in my years of watching and re-watching it was what the director of the film stated about the characters. You can interpret it for yourself:

"[I] had a great fault and I learned an awful lot from that. There were no normal people in it. Everyone you met was a screwball and since that time I learned my lesson and don't intend ever again to make everybody crazy."

I wondered what people thought of this film when they were in the theatre at the time because of the way it was described as a commercial and financial failure all at once alongside as being just a generally bad film. However, it really grew in its comments and people began to regard it as very clever. I just really wanted to know what made it not really that much of a success even though it was directed by quite a big director and starred two of Hollywood’s giants who had also been in a film together before and would go on to be in two more films together in the future. It would be reasoning I would like to see.