Getafilm’s Dan Getahaun Praises Donald Sosin Comment at WitD

by Sam Juliano

     Daniel Getahaun, the popular and effervescent proprietor of that beloved blogsite Getafilm, today congratulated Wonders in the Dark, for the glowing comment entered last week by world-famous silent film composer Donald Sosin under Allan Fish’s review for the King Vidor classic, The Big Parade.  Getahaun said:

     I just wanted to extend a personal congratulations for this great achievement at your site.  To say that you’ve started WitD successfully would be a massive understatement – I can hardly keep up!  Truly, it seems your own blog was the perfect outlet, and as you can see you already have  arousing community of cinephiles on board.

     With such great writing on so many films, including older classics, its no wonder filmakers and composers like Sosin have found their way here.  Cheers and best of luck going forward!

     WitD thanks Dan Getahaun profusely for his remarks, especially since his own magnificent film oasis, Getafilm is one of everyone’s favorite places to visit.  Thanks Dan!

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Bringing up Baby *****

 

by Allan Fish

my choice as best film of the 1930s…

(USA 1938 102m) DVD1/2

Searching for the intercostal clavicle

p  Howard Hawks  d  Howard Hawks  w  Dudley Nichols, Hagar Wilde  story  Hagar Wilde  ph  Russell Metty  ed  George Hively  m  Roy Webb  art  Van Nest Polglase, Perry Ferguson  cos  Howard Greer

Katharine Hepburn (Susan Vance), Cary Grant (Prof.David Huxley), May Robson (Aunt Elizabeth), Charles Ruggles (Maj.Horace Applegate), Walter Catlett (Constable Slocum), Fritz Feld (Dr Fritz Lehman), Barry Fitzgerald (Mr Gogarty), Leona Roberts (Hannah Gogarty), George Irving (Alexander Peabody), Virginia Walker (Alice Swallow), Jack Carson, Ward Bond,

Bringing up Baby is one of those films which is a pleasure to discuss, a pleasure to write about, a film that, to those in on the joke, needs little introduction or even another viewing prior to putting digits to keyboard.  It’s so indelibly imprinted on the memory as to be not only irremovable but cherished.  Screwball comedies are a thing of beauty to many film buffs opining for them in an age when they seem no longer possible and outmoded.  Yet do any films move faster than they?  Even now, contemplating this sub genre, one mourns the absence of such other gems as The Awful Truth, Ball of Fire and Easy Living from this list.  Yet they are merely classics, whereas Howard Hawks’ masterpiece is the greatest of its type ever committed to celluloid and one of the funniest films ever shot.  It’s also one of the quickest, maybe only surpassed by Hawks’ other comedy masterpiece His Girl Friday.  Yet Friday is a knowing film, a cynical film in which the characters are as hard boiled as their surroundings.  Baby is quite the opposite, a film in which innocence and almost surrealism are to be cherished.  It’s also the finest film anyone involved with it ever made, and when you think of Hawks, Grant and Hepburn, that is not a statement to be made lightly.

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