You Can't Take It With You

Film

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<strong>Rating: </strong>5/5
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Time Out says

How true that is. And how revealing. Capra is at his most sentimental here, with James Stewart, the son of a munitions tycoon, falling for dizzy Jean Arthur, who comes from a poor but happy family of eccentrics. There are fireworks when the two fathers meet, but mostly the picture is a damp squib, trite, preachy, and desperately sincere. If the poor were a vocal minority, this would be denounced as the equivalent of Uncle Tom-ism. The cast is appealing, particularly Stewart and Arthur, but it's not enough. Polly Wolly Doodle indeed.

Author: BC

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Release details

UK release:

1938

Duration:

127 mins

Cast and crew

Director:

Frank Capra

Cast:

Spring Byington, Ann Miller, Mischa Auer, Edward Arnold, Lionel Barrymore, James Stewart, Jean Arthur, Eddie 'Rochester' Anderson

Music:

Dimitri Tiomkin

Art Director:

Stephen Goosson

Editor:

Gene Havlick

Cinematography:

Joseph Walker

Screenwriter:

Robert Riskin

Producer:

Frank Capra

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Comments & ratings

Rated as: 5/5 (1 rating)

  • You ask, " What do I think? ". I think that the favorite piece of literature of the three previous reviewers must be ' 400 years of German Humor '. What grouches! This is probably the finest American comedy ever produced. I really can't find a flaw with it.

    Steve K Sat Aug 11 2012
    Rated as: 5/5
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  • Perhaps audiences of the Great Depression were less concerned with plausibility but 80 years on I find the sentimentality more than a little off-putting, not to mention the family's Pavlovian droolings at the prospect of social elevation. There is also the black couple who seem to be part of the furniture despite their status as domestic servants but do not get to eat at the main table.

    Denis Wed Dec 14 2011
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  • They're not a poor family. They're the family of someone who was wealthy enough to support a family for thirty-five years with only one member who works (the granddaughter Alice). This is just the tip of the implausibility and incoherence iceberg of the story.

    Alan Thu May 12 2011
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