This is one of the few films I own (on DVD) and one of my favorites. Everybody I talk to says that it's one of their favorites. Can anybody offer up some reasons why audiences back in the 30's didn't like or 'get' this film? I really can't figure it out and would love to know.
Anybody?
Oy vey re the arguments in the thread about whether this is "really funny" or not. It's funny to you if you laughed (as I did--so it was very funny to me). If you didn't laugh, it wasn't funny to you, and that's fine.
So regarding the question, "Why didn't more people find this enjoyable/funny/entertaining when it was released?", the answer wouldn't be about whether it's "really funny". Humor is subjective. Nothing is "really funny" or not.
I find it curious, too. In my opinion the pacing and much of the humor has similarities to the Marx Brothers, for example, so it's not as if there was nothing around at the time that was successful instead. We'd probably have to look at things like the film's marketing, what else had been released at the same time, what else was going on historically at the time of its release, whether there were popular opinions that in general weren't so favorable about people involved with the film (someone mentioned that Hepburn was almost "box office poison" at the time), etc. I also agree that there's a serious undertone to the film--all the relationship stuff, the question of whether you're ending up with the right person, etc., that isn't in films like Marx Brothers movies, that might not have gone over so well in the 30s. There are probably a lot of factors involved.
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I was about to write the exact same thing. It's very ignorant to claim that the movie is flat-out not funny, when many people think it is. Humor is very subjective.
shareI was actually very impressed by this film. I thought it was hilarious, but there are a few aspects that I think would have made it less appealing to a 1930's audience.
1- Cary Grant- He does a fantastic job in this film, but he's definetely playing outside his typical role as the suave and charming leading man here. People loved Cary Grant, but it was probaby difficult to see him play such an awkward/ uncoordinated character, especially when his role in The Awful Truth (released shortly before BUB) was probably still fresh in people's minds.
2- Katherine Hepburn- I love her and I find her aggressiveness refreshing, but I’m sure it was not quite as easy to adjust to during the 1930s. At that time, her character was probably seen as more domineering and masculine, especially since her brassiness seems to emasculate Cary Grant (literally, in the scene where he ends up wearing her bathrobe.)Her voice can also get kind of grating, even I’ll admit.
3- The type of comedy- Many other popular screwball comedies of the time like Ball of Fire and His Girl Friday were dialogue heavy. Although this has some great dialogue -exchanges like [D: My dear young lady, I'm not losing my temper. I'm merely trying to play some golf! S: You chose the funniest places; this is a parking lot] had me rolling- much of the comedy here is physical and probably a little more manic than people were used to.
Either way, I’m glad that it was given a greater appreciation after the success of “What’s up, Doc?” It really is a hilarious movie if you can sit back, enjoy the comic mishaps and suspend your disbelief.
No sympathetic characters. Grant and Hepburn both deserve to be eaten by the leopard.
Sometime in the 1950s a French film journal named Cahiers du Cinema decided Howard Hawks is an "auteur" and everything he did was art. Lots of people have been stupid enough to believe it, and Bringing Up Baby was reclassified from a flop to a masterpiece.
There are several explanations often given.Katherine Hepburn was disliked by a large part of the audience.She was nicknamed "Katherine of Arrogance", and rubbed many people the wrong way.Also, while the movie was the ultimate screwball comedy, it came when those were going out of vogue. People were growing tired of them ; the studios, as usual, running a good thing into the ground. And the pace was so frantic it did confuse some people.
I have no doubt that David's referring to Ruggles as "Major Appletree" was deliberate, not an error. It was done for humorous effect and to show how rattled David had become.
It wasn't well received mostly by small town and suburban folks in North America. Machine gun dialog and "unlikeable" characters make them confuse. For socially inadequate suburbanites, the characters have to be nice and dandy and after a joke there must be some time so they would eventually get it. On the other hand this film is usually liked by most people around the world who grew up in a big city as they are used to high energy communication and actually being part of a society they know that all people aren't mediocre model citizens and good guys with white hats and bad guys with black ones is just a silly fantasy of those who don't acknowledge the complexity and diversity of human beings.
shareI'm surprised some people don't like this, I just watched this with friends who'd never heard of it and we all loved it.
sharekahjraj wrote:
Can anybody offer up some reasons why audiences back in the 30's didn't like or 'get' this film? I really can't figure it out and would love to know.I don't know. There are people who don't like it now and I have no idea why other than that humor is subjective.What I do know is that it wasn't given much of a chance at the time of its release.
Despite Bringing Up Baby's reputation as a flop, it was successful in some parts of the U.S. The film premiered on February 16, 1938 at the Golden Gate Theatre in San Francisco (where it was a hit), and was also successful in Los Angeles, Portland, Denver, Cincinnati and Washington, D.C.. However, it was a financial disappointment in the Midwest, as well as most other cities in the country, including NYC; to RKO's chagrin, the film's premiere in New York on March 3, 1938 at Radio City Music Hall made only $70,000 and it was pulled after one week[44] in favor of Jezebel with Bette Davis.[45]https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Bringing_Up_BabyIt was successful in a number of big cities, but not in New York where it only lasted a week.It got a very bad review from the New York Times critic and was quickly replaced by another film that was expected to do better.
However, Frank S. Nugent of the New York Times disliked the film, considering it derivative and cliché-ridden, a rehash of dozens of other screwball comedies of the period. He labeled Hepburn's performance "breathless, senseless, and terribly, terribly fatiguing",[42] and added, "If you've never been to the movies, Bringing Up Baby will be new to you – a zany-ridden product of the goofy-farce school. But who hasn't been to the movies?"[43]IbidIf the producers had had faith in it, it very likely would've been successful as it was later. share