Christmas in July
Written and Directed by Preston Sturges
1940/USA
Paramount Pictures
Repeat viewing/Netflix rental
[box] Jimmy MacDonald: If you can’t sleep, it isn’t the coffee. It’s the bunk.[/box]
Preston Sturges is a great favorite of mine but somehow this early effort leaves me less than wildly enthusiastic.
Jimmy MacDonald (Dick Powell) and Betty Casey (Ellen Drew) are in love. Jimmy doesn’t want to marry unless he can do so in style. He has his hopes pinned on winning $25,000 in a coffee slogan contest. In the meantime, the jury at the coffee company is deadlocked in choosing the winner due to a recalcitrant member (William Demerest). Jimmy’s office mates play a practical joke by sending him a telegram to say he won. When he takes it in to the company president, he writes Jimmy a check and the hijinx begin. With Franklin Pangborn and a host of character actors from Sturges’s stock company.
This just does not hit the heights of inspired lunacy I expect from Sturges. That’s not to say that it isn’t a perfectly fine picture and very funny in places. Something may be a little off about the pacing. I like Dick Powell very much but I also think that he lacked the necessary edge to carry off the lead role here.
Clip
I recently revisited this one. A great concept, but I agree, not Preston Sturges at his best.
I wish I could put my finger on why it doesn’t work as well as some of the others. I have The Great McGinty coming up soon and am really looking forward to some great work from Sturges in the early 40s.
I don’t think that Dick Powell is perfect casting for a Sturges movie. It is not the best effort from the director or the actor.
Agreed. Eddie Bracken is more Sturges’ speed though he also did wonders with Henry Fonda and Joel McCrea.
Dick Powell is an odd choice for Sturges. I just watched THE BAD AND THE BEAUTIFUL and wished Powell’s segment was longer. I enjoy both his youthful and craggy personas.
I enjoy him too, even in this. I wonder if he comes off as too smart to be a Sturges hero.
Ohhhh, too smart. What does that say about my beloved Joel McCrea? He can play dumb?
Not dumb. Innocent maybe.
Dick is not too cynical in 1940, just worldly. Later, he’ll give great cynical.
Joel is innocent. Forever innocent.