Mon père et nous

When I first saw this movie, I thought it was fair at best. On the second viewing, I really, really liked it. I'm almost afraid to see it for the third time, as I could almost dislike it again since I seem to flip-flop on this.

THE GOOD: The film has "charm" written all over it. Although Irene Dunne has some Grace Allen-type gag lines, William Powell is the one who provides most of the laughs in this tale of upper-crust family life in the 1880s. However, both Powell and Dunne are excellent and play off each other well. The story revolves around the personal and business life of the Clarence Day family, a true family in the sense of the word it, which is nice to see. Every character is interesting and the supporting cast includes Edmund Gwenn and Zasu Pitts (love that name!). Nice Technicolor, too.

THE BAD: The romance between Jimmy Lydon and a young Elizabeth Taylor gets a little sappy. Powell's constant exclamation "Gad!" is very annoying as a close as screenwriters apparently could get to saying "God" all the time in 1947.

All in all, it's a nice period piece that takes you back life a little over a century ago, and provides us another one of these more-innocent family stories. To my knowledge, there has never been a good print made of this, either on tape or DVD, which doesn't make sense considering the fine cast and good reputation of this movie.

In his third and final Oscar nomination, William Powell was nominated for playing the bellowing and lovable 19th century domestic tyrant Clarence Day, Sr. in Life With Father. If he had to lose I'm sure Powell was glad it was to his very good friend in real life Ronald Colman for A Double Life. Still with that strange flaming red hair on top of his familiar features, Powell imprints his own personality on the leading role of the longest running play on Broadway up to that time.

Based on the recollections of Clarence Day, Jr. as played by Jimmy Lydon here, Life With Father ran for eight years on Broadway for 3447 performances. It was brought to the stage by Howard Lindsay and his two partners, writing partner Russell Crouse who adapted Day's work to the stage and life partner Dorothy Stickney who with her husband got their career roles on Broadway. The play ran from 1939 through 1947 taking America right through World War II. The time that it was written and presented to the public may account for its popularity as the public might just have wanted reassurance of American values at that critical point.

As Lindsay and Stickney had no kind of movie box office, Warner Brothers decided to acquire William Powell for the lead and cast Irene Dunne as the wise mother who has learned just the right way to handle her husband and inevitably get what she wants. Powell is a man who thinks when all else has failed, he can bellow his way through any situation. My favorite line in the play is when he tries to hire a maid and that title quote is when he's asked for references.

Warner paid a lot in loan outs for this film. Irene Dunne was not a contract employee of his studio and Elizabeth Taylor was also borrowed from MGM for the small, decorative part of a cousin that gets Jimmy Lydon and Martin Milner's hormones in an uproar. The part that Taylor plays was originated on Broadway by another future film star, Teresa Wright.

Incidentally Martin Milner reminisced many years later about the film and said of all the boys and of course Powell, he was the only natural redhead among the lot.

Edmund Gwenn fresh from an Oscar himself for Miracle on 34th Street plays the Episcopalian minister who is trying to get a large contribution from Powell for a new church. Their discussion is also a highlight of the play and the fact that Powell had never been baptized is also a subject of a lot of humor.

Father still had life well into the Fifties with a television series adapted from the play that starred Leon Ames as dear old dad.

The play, the film still have a lot of character in it.

As an adult, Clarence Day Jr. (1874-1935) joined his well-known father on Wall Street--but developed a form of arthritis that left him a semi-invalid. Shortly before his death he published LIFE WITH FATHER, a humorous memoir of his Victorian childhood; sadly, he did not live to see its great success. A best seller, the novel was adapted to the stage in 1939 by Howard Lindsay and Russell Crouse. Warner Bro.s bought the film rights, agreeing to wait until the show finished its Broadway run; as it happened the studio had a long wait, for the play went on to become one of Broadway's longest running shows, playing almost eight years.

In acquiring the rights, Warner Bro.s also gave Clarence Day's widow and playwrights Lindsay and Crouse substantial power over the film version. Censorship issues of the day prevented an absolute translation of the script to the screen, but on the whole the script survived the transformation extremely well, and fueled by a host of flawless performances and remarkably fine production values LIFE WITH FATHER became as memorable on screen as it was on stage.

Clarence Day is an eccentric man, absolutely certain that he alone is correct in all decisions, and eternally running afoul of wife Vinnie's scatterbrained logic, his four sons, visiting relatives, and terrified servants. When a conversation reveals that he has never been baptized, Mr. Day laughs the matter off--but Vinnie is determined that he will be baptized whether he likes it or not. Comic battle-lines are drawn, and the result is a hilariously amusing portrait of Victorian manners and attitudes about everything from religion to the place of women in the world.

The performances are superlative. This would prove to be among the last great roles for both William Powell and Irene Dunne, who play Clarence and Vinnie Day, and to describe their work as flawless is actually an understatement: we completely believe in them from start to finish. The same is true of the cast in general, which includes a remarkably beautiful Elizabeth Taylor; legendary comic ZaSu Pitt; and even a very young Martin Milner. The costuming and sets also capture the look and feel of the era in remarkable fashion. The film is perfectly executed from start to finish.

But you might as well throw your money away than buy any of the releases presently available on VHS and DVD. There is not a one of them worth a dime: the color is atrocious, the sound is horrific, and the picture so blurry that the only thing you'll get for your money is a headache--and this has been true of every factory release I've seen to date.

It is a terrible shame that such a fine, indeed such a great film has been so incredibly neglected. Fortunately for all concerned, LIFE WITH FATHER continues to turn up on television fairly often. Until there is a restored release, don't buy a VHS or a DVD: tape it from television instead, for I can almost guarantee that the version you find there will be superior.

GFT, Amazon Reviewer

I have been a tremendous fan of this movie for many years. I discovered the movie version after I had seen a local stage production and it was an excellent transfer of the play to the screen. Until recently I had only seen it on TV first in black and white years ago and then in color on TCM. I like it so well I bought two of the DVD versions (I won't mention which) and as other reviewers have said they were horrible with washed out color, grainy images and sound that was not synchronized and barely understandable. I guess this is all you can reasonably expect for a movie that has some how slipped into the public domain and for which there is not much demand. However, while searching on Amazon I discovered a review for a new digitally remastered DVD that supposedly fixed all those problems. I ordered a copy and the review was correct. There is now an excellent DVD available from DigiComTV BarCode # 885444062681.

I saw this film - once again on the indispensable American Movie Classics Channel - for the first time recently and it has quickly become one of my favorites. It perfectly captures the flavor of Clarence Day's books and draws us completely into the era and into this particular New York brownstone. This was my first viewing of William Powell in what was surely his quintessential role; his work is superb, as is the marvelous chemistry between him and Irene Dunne as his "dear Vinnie". The source of the movie was Clarence Day Jr's three books - "Life With Father", "Life with Mother", and "God and My Father" - which recollect his growing up in late 19th century New York in the well-to-do household of his irascible, catankerous, but ultimately loving father Clarence Sr. As the books are mere strung-together pastiches, it must have been a challenge to assemble them into a coherent whole with a story line. Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse succeeded, in the play on which the film is based, and screenwriter Donald Ogden Stewart transferred it to celluloid very nicely. A wonderful character study, and a beautiful snapshot of life in late 19th century New York. Viewers who enjoy it are well-advised to find the books on which they are based (the library is your best bet; the books have gone out of print since their best-seller days long ago). At the conclusion, one hates to have the movie end; you want to spend just another day or two in the Day household.