What Remains Is Love

 

A Timeless Story About Wealth And Happiness, and The Difference Between

You Can’t Take It With You (1938) – A spoiled rich young man finds a direction for his life through the love of a young woman from an unconventional family.  One family has everything, and one has seemingly nothing.  But the truth is stranger and more delightful than he thought.

Directed by Frank Capra

Starring – James Stewart, Lionel Barrymore, Jean Arthur, Edward Arnold

Why I Liked It – Eighty-five years later, so much of this story remains fresh and relatable.  Add in an all-star cast of leads and supporting actors, plus Capra’s irrepressible optimism for an irresistible blend.

One (of many) reasons I despair when I hear younger movie fans say they don’t like/won’t watch older movies are the wonderful movies like this one.  Based on a Pulitzer Prize winning Broadway play by George Kaufman and Moss Hart, Frank Capra gives us another feel good masterpiece.  The cast is brilliant as well.  Stewart, Arthur, and Barrymore are amazing actors all by themselves.  Add in a supporting cast of Ann Miller, Edward Arnold, Dub Taylor, Samuel S. Hinds, and H. B. Warner and you have a show with something wonderful going on in every corner.  The Vanderhoff/Sycamore family is unconventional, idiosyncratic, and more than a bit odd.  But they are also loving and accepting, offering a haven for those who wish to be as “…the lilies of the field”.

Now some of you are saying, “Phlipside, ole, buddy, ole pal, I have no idea who most of those people are.”  Sadly, I understand.  Jimmy Stewart might ring a bell, maybe the Barrymore name (“You mean, like Drew Barrymore?”  Yes, same fabulous acting family), but the rest?  Sadly, they are slipping away.  That’s so, so wrong.  I’ve written about Jean Arthur’s genius as a comic actress elsewhere (HERE), but in this one she gives a light comic touch to the romantic lead role.  If you’re a fan of “It’s A Wonderful Life” (also Capra directed) then you’ll recognize many members of the cast, including Jimmy the Raven.  For Stewart, this was his breakthrough role.  The next three decades of work with Capra, Hitchcock and more pushed him to the top three all-time of American male actors.  Lionel Barrymore could play anything and did during his long career.  Even arthritis so severe that it pushed him into cocaine addiction and two broken hips in as many years couldn’t slow him down.  He could play a bad guy that would make Darth Vader think twice about crossing him.  Then he’d turn around for the beloved and eccentric grandfather here.  These are performers not to be missed.

Capra himself deserves a nod as well.  He was criticized throughout his career for being too optimistic, too “feel-good” in his movies.  The director of “It’s A Wonderful Life”, “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington”, “It Happened One Night”, “Lost Horizon” and many other classics, never denied it.  He believed that the movie world needed movies that uplifted the audience.  His movies continue to fight the tendency in Hollywood to be dour and dark.  To me, I think of his work as being “anti-noir”.  Not that he was fighting against that style, only that he was the opposite, the mirror image of it.

This movie is fun, but it also strikes home with serious points about the value of the “common man”.  Being wealthy doesn’t raise anyone’s “quality”.  How they behave with that wealth tells you everything you need to know about that quality.  Capra’s movies are often seen as espousing “liberal” points of view.  Left leaning writers wrote many of his best work, but Capra himself was a confirmed conservative.  While that resulted in unpleasant parts of his personal history (he was an FBI informant during the McCarthy era), the balance between writer and director results in brilliant, human movies.  This one took home the “Best Movie” Oscar.

Rating – ***** Highest Recommendation

This is a terrible trailer clip for this one, but the best I could find.