This is another flick I've always meant to see but never got around to for some reason. Now that I've seen it, it's kind of a revelation -- it contains a couple of one of a kind performances from stars whose personas I thought I had pretty much figured out. Cary Grant plays against type as a bumbling, nerdy scientist and Katharine Hepburn sheds her super serious image to play a cute, bubbly, absent-minded heiress. Hepburn enters Grant's ordered, risk-free life like a hurricane, which leads to disaster after disaster. In the end, this proves to be good for Grant, but it's a hellish journey for him getting there. Hepburn has fun all along, because she's in love with Grant almost at first sight.
BRINGING UP BABY is probably the craziest and most manic of the screwball comedies. The wacky Grant flick I watched last year around this time, THE AWFUL TRUTH, looks like a serious documentary by comparison. I recommend watching this flick with plenty of rest and when you're in a really good mood -- otherwise, I could see the non-stop energy potentially hen-pecking the viewer to death and leaving you exhausted. Most scenes feature characters talking over each other and about half of them involve an animal making noises, too.
The "Baby" of the title is none other than a leopard gifted to Hepburn's character that she and Grant end up having to take care of and ultimately lose in the Connecticut woods and have to track down. But I'm getting a little ahead of myself -- I haven't mentioned the missing intercostal clavicle that Grant needs to complete the Brontosaurus skeleton he's been working on at the museum, or George the dog who buries the bone somewhere on Hepburn's estate. But I'm still kind of ahead of myself. The fact of the matter is, the plot kind of defies description and falls under the category "one damned thing after another."
Listening to an interview with director Howard Hawks, I learned that after production he realized every single character in this film is crazy and he wished he had kept at least one or two sane characters to help balance things out. I can understand where he's coming from, but I'm not sure if BRINGING UP BABY would be remembered as the perfect example of the screwball genre that it is if it did take a little break from the craziness. As it is, it's almost like a parody of a parody, though of course almost everyone plays it straight.
One thing I noticed early on is that a lot of the comic set pieces between Grant and Hepburn are played out in long takes. Take the early scene in a fancy restaurant, for example -- Hepburn tears Grant's coat on accident, then Grant tears Hepburn's dress on accident. Hepburn walks around oblivious that her ass is showing, and Grant desperately tries to keep her covered with his top hat. All the while, the two characters are bickering a mile a minute. This whole sequence plays without many cuts, so you actually see Grant and Hepburn literally going through all of the staging. There's no cheating from the director or editor for comedic effect -- it's all squarely on Grant and Hepburn's shoulders, unfolding on screen as it actually happened on stage. That's pretty amazing.
Grant and Hepburn are pretty much remembered as serious leading actors and were never as insane before or after this film. It's really something to watch them cut loose here. There are several pratfalls that the actors clearly take themselves, Grant falling square on his ass, Hepburn flopping face down on the floor. Despite the fact that this movie probably has more dialogue per minute than most, it is still a very physical affair.
In the end, what's it say about romance? Hepburn's character is crazy and Grant's is straight laced, but at least Hepburn seems to be living her life, making her own decisions, the master of her own destiny. Grant starts out the film pretty much doing whatever he's told, and eventually thanks to Hepburn's example, rises to the occasion himself and starts to live life. The characters change each other, ever so slightly, just by entering into each other's spheres by complete coincidence. It's a testament to how your life is before you meet someone, compared to how it is after you meet them, and how no one can ever predict when, or how that's going to happen.
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