Life with Father
by Michael Curtiz
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Actor: Edmund Gwenn, Elizabeth Taylor, Irene Dunne, William Powell, Zasu PittsDirector: Michael Curtiz
Brand: Bayside ENT Dist
Cinematographer: J. Peverell Marley
Producer: Jack L. Warner
Producer: Robert Buckner
Writer: Clarence Day
Writer: Donald Ogden Stewart
Writer: Howard Lindsay
Writer: Russel Crouse
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language)
Format: Color, DVD, NTSC
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 118 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2002-06-04
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: Alpha Video
DVD Reviews of Life with Father
DVD Review: The Sound Quality--And Other Issues
Summary: 2 Stars
The washed out visuals wouldn't be so hard to take if that were the sole problem. The faded quality sort of adds to the period look in a perverse way. (Which is not to say I still wouldn't prefer to see it restored to glorious technicolor). The sound quality is intolerable however. I can put up with a lot but not sound this muddy. The only reason I sat through it was because I was watching it relatively late at night and was just too tired to get up and turn it off (and had misplaced the remote).
I've always enjoyed William Powell, who stars as the curmudgeonly late 19th century patriarch, Clarence Day, Sr.. And Irene Dunne, as his exuberant wife Vinnie--just radiates class and charm--even when playing a character who could be a bit of a ditz. In point of fact, she brings a kind of level-headedness to her character's ditziness that makes it all her more appealing. She's dumb as a fox really, and can wrap her irascible husband right around her finger.
A very young Elizabeth Taylor appears as the Day family's houseguest--the traveling companion of Mr. Day's cousin Cora (ZaSu Pitts). She's quite good in this (from what I can hear), as the eldest Day boy's first major crush. That boy, Clarence Day, Jr., grew up to be the author of the memoir upon which the play and subsequent film were based. So it's rooted in fact, even if (likely) gussied up a bit for stage and screen.
But here's one little plot twist I couldn't quite gloss over. Two of the sons, Clarence and John, Jr., are apparently responsible for the accidental poisoning of their mother. They've been peddling some quack's nostrum throughout the city and have apparently decided to use their (mildly) ailing mother as a guinea pig--and this in an era before they even used guinea pigs as guinea pigs.
Mother becomes violenlty ill and there's talk that they may lose her. She does recover, perhaps in part, because her unbaptized husband agrees that he will finally subject himself to that rite and help guarantee that she will someday see him in Heaven. OK, so maybe she wasn't suffering from a sickness unto death, after all. Who knows? This is the Hollywood version, after all. Still, all of this comes to light on the very morning that Mr. Day agrees to be baptized. Young John, the boy entrepreneur, admits his transgression when it's revealed that a dose of his medicine has killed a neighbor's dog.
Mr. Day's insistence that young John go out and refund every last customer to whom the lad has sold a bottle for once seems like a very rational (and not just curmudgeonly) demand. If the stuff killed a dog and sickened Mrs. Day, then whatever the 19th century version of a recall is called, seems more than appropriate. Time was a-wastin', in fact. But Mom's priority is Dad's baptism. And that, my friends, makes no sense given the potential consequences of that quacksilver's being out in the world.
Yeah, I know. Don't think too much! It's never a good idea. The book was probably different anyway. Still as ditzy as Mom could be and as much as Dad's crotchitiness could get in the way of clear thinking, you gotta wonder what was going on in their collective noggins on that fine morning.
Description of Life with Father
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