Il miracolo del villaggio

Although I've always preferred Palm Beach Story this is my 2nd favourite Preston Sturges film (Lady Eve 3rd). It still makes me hoot with laughter or bring tears to my eyes by turns even though I know it's basically only satirical screwball comedy. The problem is that anybody watching this who doesn't know anything at all about Hollywood censorship and the Hays Office is likely to be very puzzled by it all and hardly understand it. The tortuous plot was solely meant to circumvent and sneer at the prevailing censorship enforcement, whilst simultaneously maintaining the standard decorum expected from media in 1942-44. Otherwise we might have been treated (among many other things) to coitus scenes with Ratzkywatzky, Officer Kockenlocker comically swearing his head off or at the very least a shot of Trudy's belly at Christmas. Nowadays with the relentless progress of acceptable "taste" none of this matters - we are not spared the littlest thing!

The main actors give it their best and play it with gusto: live-wire Betty Hutton and 4F Eddie Bracken as the simple young lovers who don't find it so simple, Diana Lynn as her sidekick cynical 14 yo sister, but especially William Demarest who turned in his finest knockabout and farcically violent performance here - at 50, too. I think it also helps to have seen Star Spangled Rhythm with Hutton and Bracken really "enjoying" themselves in a ... more light-hearted way before seeing this. My favourite bits are the scenes where Norval and Trudy are preparing to leave home and get "married", both of them joyfully stuttering away.

The Production Code was ridiculously strict - I've even thought it was designed by a bunch of perverts - but it at least provided some kind of discipline to all concerned. It's a discipline that is completely missing from todays films, except for my personal discipline in avoiding most of them. This is a wonderful film, the old story told cleverly and differently about simple people in Hicksville having fun and paying the price. Even only 2/3 years later Sturges would have done it differently, but along with Capra's "Arsenic and old lace" this has got to be one of the best of the many tombstones over the grave of the Hays Office there is.

Great movies are movies you can't bear to see end, no matter how many times you've seen 'em. They play new the second, third, tenth time around; catching the light at angles you'd never seen them in before, gaining richness and profundity in familiar details while throwing never-noticed subtleties into sudden high relief. They awaken you to reserves of emotion inside yourself that are plumbed so rarely, you'd almost forgotten you had them in you all along. They are one-to-one experiences - even if you see a film like Preston Sturges' MIRACLE OF MORGAN'S CREEK in a packed revival house laughing uproariously en masse, you can only share a surface pleasure with those strangers: the deeper joys of this movie are yours and yours alone, shocking you into an awareness of how potent the alchemy of a great film can be, no matter how often you've felt that seismic shift with other great films. Even when you encounter an idiotic review that completely, callously, misses the whole point, you can't even get angry - how could you? A STAR WARS or Tarantino fan clucking terms like 'dated' or 'foolish' at a Preston Sturges movie is too pitiable a wretch to deserve actual scorn: maybe one day they'll figure it out, if they're lucky. MIRACLE turns out to be aptly titled, as this heady, unduplicable blend of slapstick, sitcom, surrealism and sharply observed slice-of-life manages to embody WW2-era popular entertainment while standing as far apart and above all its contemporaries as is humanly possible. The genius of Sturges was not that he ran end-runs around the censors but that he subverted them from the safest place to do so, deep within the fortress of the Production Code. The story of a small-town girl who finds herself both married and unmarried at the same time - but DEFINITELY pregnant in either case - is deliriously funny and brimming with great heart and honest sentiment, yet it's never less than a devastating indictment of the kind of mean-spirited provincialism that brought the Code into being in the first place. Rather than single out exemplary performances, I direct you instead to the complete cast-list (for the mark of a Preston Sturges movie is a wealth of expert actors, each blessed with scenes and dialogue devised to play to their respective strengths). Thus, the Esther Howards and Porter Halls shine as indelibly in small roles as the leads do - here, Bracken, Hutton, Lynn & Demarest, all inspired. If you haven't yet seen this unforgettable jewel, beat a path to wherever it is you have to beat a path to, and rectify the situation immediately: you should be ready for your second viewing about three minutes after the end credits run.

This is an amusing farce guaranteed to bring some good hearted laughter as it recounts the story of a small town girl's indiscretion that has to be covered up with a series of lies. Betty Hutton is terrific as the partyloving gal who can't remember the man she married during a drunken joyride. Eddie Bracken as her nerdy but loyal boyfriend has the kind of role he was born to play--as does William Demarest as her outraged father who always has his shotgun ready and complains about having two rambunctious daughters. Diana Lynn shines as Betty's younger sister. Her scenes with William Demarest are among the funniest in the entire film--even though her 14 year-old seems a bit too sensible at such a tender age.

All of the main cast are perfect. Demarest never had a funnier role in his life. His pratfalls are performed as naturally as the great silent comics.

The technique of long takes with lots of dialogue going on must have been very demanding for Hutton and Bracken--but they handle it brilliantly. Many of their scenes are done in one long take and it's amazing how much material and physical comedy they had to memorize for such extended takes.

Some of the storyline seems a bit dated by today's standards but on the whole the film holds up well in the laugh department. I liked it much better than HAIL THE CONQUERING HERO with Bracken in a similar role.

Preston Sturges deserved his nomination for Best Original Screenplay but lost the award to Lamar Trotti for WILSON. Sturges was also nominated the same year for HAIL THE CONQUERING HERO.

This movie may be the best comedy produced during World War II, especially in reference to the timing and the language related to the humorous treatment of a serious subject. Eddie Bracken is superb as Norval Jones, and delivers lines in a rapid-fire fashion that intensifes the satire. Betty Hutton as Trudy Kockenlocker is the perfect foil for Norval. Where Norval is witty, Trudy is coy. Norval anticipates problems, Trudy is expedient. Norval is so nervous that he sees "black spots" when agitated, Trudy is calm--though in trouble. And the constant conflict between Emmy (Diana Lynn) and Constable Kockenlocker(William Demarest) is typical of a wisecracking teen and an overly protective widower. There is hardly a funnier scene in movies than the marriage ceremony for Trudy and Norval. The humor in the whole movie seems to improve with each subsequent viewing.

I first saw "Miracle" during WW2, sitting on an emptied bomb crate in a field where Special Services had set up a screen. We soldiers howled with laughter. Since then I have seen it a few more times and I enjoy it more than ever.