You Can't Take It With You
Director: Frank Capra. Cast: Lionel Barrymore, Jean Arthur, James Stewart, Edward Arnold, Mary Forbes,
Ann Miller, Spring Byington, Mischa Auer, H.B. Warner, Samuel S. Hinds, Donald Meek, Clarence Wilson,
Lillian Yarbo, Eddie Anderson, Halliwell Hobbs, Harry Davenport. Screenplay: Robert Riskin (based on the
play by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart).
A charming little morsel of sweet nonsense that allows Frank Capra to glide along on easy comic material
before helming the much trickier and more subversive Mr. Smith Goes to Washington the following
year. The plot of this one, which was popular enough in its time to nab the Oscar for Best Picture,
concerns Jean Arthur's attempts to hide from paramour Jimmy Stewart that her family is a barrel of
monkeys. Actually, even that scenario taken literally might be easier to account for than the baroque
eccentrics who do inhabit Arthur's family home—improbably large and well-appointed for a family that has
no discernible income. The picture is built on such ephemeral moments and easy smiles that I can hardly
reconstruct without cheating what exactly Arthur's relatives do. One of them is a ballet dancer nearly as
relentless in her pirouetting as the kid sister in Welcome to the
Dollhouse; another relation, or pair of them, perform experiments with explosives in the basement.
It's all about what you'd expect, and if it doesn't last long in the memory, you kind of have to expect
that, too. Arthur and Stewart, two of the era's most supremely appealing stars, were the right folks to
recruit onto this featherweight project; we are so engaged in their own engagement to marry that
the picture's theme of accepting difference and seeing past prejudices rings absurdly more truly than it
should. Nothing much to endorse here that Capra hasn't done much more memorably, but nothing to object to
either. You trot out a hit play, you hire an ace cast to fill the multitude of roles, and you stick a
camera in front of it. What could go wrong? You as a renter certainly won't—You Can't Take It With
You is a pretty safe bet for a breezy evening's entertainment. Grade:
B–
- Academy Award Nominations and *Winners:
- *Best Picture
- *Best Director: Frank Capra
- Best Supporting Actress: Spring Byington
- Best Writing, Screenplay: Robert Riskin
- Best Cinematography: Joseph Walker
- Best Editing: Gene Havlick
- Best Sound