Bringing Up Baby is a black and white film produced in 1938. Howard Hawks directed the film and is perhaps the greatest director of American genre films. Hawks made films in almost every American genre, and each of these films could well serve as one of the very best examples and artistic embodiments of the type: …screwball comedy (Bringing up Baby)… (Gerald Mast).
According to Gerald Mist, Hawks was a master of point-of-view, knowledgeable about which camera perspective would precisely convey the necessary psychological and moral information. The type of shots that are done throughout the film are establishing shots, crane shots and moving in up close with a crane especially when the scene has the dinosaur bones in it. The shots with Susan Vance, played by Katharine Hepburn, and Dr. David Husley, played by Cary Grant is very different than with Cray Grant’s character and his fiancé, Ms. Hannah. As a couple they are not on the same page. Dr. David has the idea of having both a marriage and work, he wants love, but his fiancé wants it to be about his career. During their interactions the audience can feel the awkwardness and see the magic between Susan and David.
Tim Dirks claims that Bringing Up Baby is one of the funniest, wackiest and most inspired films of all time with its characteristic breathless pace, zany antics and pratfalls, absurd situations and misunderstandings, perfect sense of comic timing, completely screwball cast, series of lunatic and hare-brained misadventures, disasters, light-hearted surprises and romantic comedy. With the way Hawks uses the different situations between Susan and David, there is nothing but pure comedy. Both characters share the comedy of equality which is very different from the Old and New comedy traditions. The characters evoke laughter equally at the idea that men and women are different and at the idea that they are not (p 122 Cavell). Cavell continues this idea of comedy of equals with saying that is it a comedy of privacy, evoking equal laughter at the fact that they are, and are not, alone. Some of the scenes that fit this description is when they are looking for baby around the house, in the forest, and at the end when she comes to visit him at his museum.
This film also does a great job showing the female pursing the male which back in the day was not really common. It was the men who planned everything out and would win the over the girl’s heart. But in this film, Susan is the one who is after David. She is the one in control and has David in a daze. He wants to get away from her but somehow he is drawn to her. She plans when she is going to see him again and is the one that can manipulate him to do anything she wants. David fights with her through the whole film but also during the fighting he shows his feelings for her for example when he rushes over to check on her because he thinks baby has done something to her. The ending, resembles the idea of the walls of Jericho and how it had to come down in the film, It Happened One Night. The bones had to come down for David to finally give in and spend his life with Susan in common love.
According to Gerald Mist, Hawks was a master of point-of-view, knowledgeable about which camera perspective would precisely convey the necessary psychological and moral information. The type of shots that are done throughout the film are establishing shots, crane shots and moving in up close with a crane especially when the scene has the dinosaur bones in it. The shots with Susan Vance, played by Katharine Hepburn, and Dr. David Husley, played by Cary Grant is very different than with Cray Grant’s character and his fiancé, Ms. Hannah. As a couple they are not on the same page. Dr. David has the idea of having both a marriage and work, he wants love, but his fiancé wants it to be about his career. During their interactions the audience can feel the awkwardness and see the magic between Susan and David.
Tim Dirks claims that Bringing Up Baby is one of the funniest, wackiest and most inspired films of all time with its characteristic breathless pace, zany antics and pratfalls, absurd situations and misunderstandings, perfect sense of comic timing, completely screwball cast, series of lunatic and hare-brained misadventures, disasters, light-hearted surprises and romantic comedy. With the way Hawks uses the different situations between Susan and David, there is nothing but pure comedy. Both characters share the comedy of equality which is very different from the Old and New comedy traditions. The characters evoke laughter equally at the idea that men and women are different and at the idea that they are not (p 122 Cavell). Cavell continues this idea of comedy of equals with saying that is it a comedy of privacy, evoking equal laughter at the fact that they are, and are not, alone. Some of the scenes that fit this description is when they are looking for baby around the house, in the forest, and at the end when she comes to visit him at his museum.
This film also does a great job showing the female pursing the male which back in the day was not really common. It was the men who planned everything out and would win the over the girl’s heart. But in this film, Susan is the one who is after David. She is the one in control and has David in a daze. He wants to get away from her but somehow he is drawn to her. She plans when she is going to see him again and is the one that can manipulate him to do anything she wants. David fights with her through the whole film but also during the fighting he shows his feelings for her for example when he rushes over to check on her because he thinks baby has done something to her. The ending, resembles the idea of the walls of Jericho and how it had to come down in the film, It Happened One Night. The bones had to come down for David to finally give in and spend his life with Susan in common love.
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