Bonne à tout faire

This was one of the most popular movies of 1948, and is still sweetly amusing. What impresses me on this latest viewing is how well actor Webb and screenwriter Herbert carry off their trick. The challenge is to keep the audience from reaching through the screen to throttle the stuffy, know-it-all, Belvedere (Webb). In short, a dislikable Belvedere would ruin the movie. So how do you, on one hand, establish his needed superiority, and, on the other, not let it ruin the comedy. After all, it's his unusual character that distinguishes the story as a whole.

As I see it, Webb and the dialog handle the challenge by making Belvedere a strictly matter-of-fact character. He says he's a genius, because as a matter of fact, he is. Crucially, he's not bragging— that would make him dislikable. Instead, he asserts his superiority much like a scientist might impartially acknowledge a fact. He's not egotistical about his accomplishments; instead, he's kind of like an impartial observer of himself. This doesn't exactly make him likable, but it does save the movie's pivotal character from being dislikable, at least as I see it. And I think it's a credit to the screenplay that they don't soften his unsociable character to maybe please the audience. All in all, I think Belvedere is a rather daring role for a comedy of its time.

Of course, it helps to have two of the screen's more likable younger actors, Young and O'Hara, as co-stars with Webb. Plus, having a fuss-budget like Haydn (the gossipy Appleton) in the same film as fuss-budget Webb sets up certain delectable possibilities. Then too, setting events in the white-collar suburbs mirrored post-war changes going on with audiences that were also getting back to family life following years of hardship and sacrifice. So, to me, it's not surprising the movie was such a hit in its day. And happily, I think it's still pretty amusing.

Robert Young and Maureen O'Hara as Harry & Tacey King were the headliners in this film but a man named Lynn Belvedere (Clifton Webb) stole the show. It was perfectly logical that Mr. Belvedere would take control of the film, he is a genius. What one thing has Belvedere not done, write a book of course! But what type of book and where will the information be collected from? How about a little town of gossips that will make a satire of a town a masterpiece of writing? But how can a genius be among them and not be discovered? The King family have terrible children that no human can control. They need a maid and live-in babysitter, whom better than a person that understands children's psychology yet hates children. Mr. Belvedere soon is hired and has the whole family under his control. A man that has the children chew their food 28 times, not 20 or 24 but 28 times. A dog trainer that has the huge mountain of a dog controlled. A man that can tell the adults in the household just how childish they can behave. When the family almost breaks up can Mr. Belvedere save the family? This is a classic which will live on in movie history.

This movie is hilarious! I don't think I stopped laughing the entire time. Everything about it is cute and funny, with the perfect counterbalance of wit and sophistication. Robert Young is in handsome lighthearted form, and the children are of course adorable and winsome - especially Roddy, who wails at the slightest provocation. It has everything! The more I watch it, the more humorous subplots emerge. My favorite scenes are when the nosy neighbors spread rumors of Lynn and Tacey's sordid affair, and she says at the lounge as they pass by, "Let's give them something to gossip about!", and proceeds to jitterbug with him. And when Mr Belvedere exposes the hypocrisy of the townspeople: Priceless. I'm so pleased with Ms O'Hara's versatility when you think about the vastly contrasting films in their genres, themes and moods that she made around the same time within the space of a few years, how they display her dynamism and acting genius with her outstandingly unique ubiquitous great theatrical stage presence that translates well to the screen which is so rare and difficult a feat to accomplish. She appears equally at home with deep brooding roles as she does the urbane comedic together-woman. This is definitely one of her best!

A very pleasant, agreeable little effort, dominated by the magnificent Clifton Webb - as sanguine and savourably sour a figure as rarely seen in Hollywood...

His character, Lynn Belvedere, is absolutely wonderful; wry, serene, roundly honest and arrogant; he is the focal point of the majority of the humour. The other actors are fine, with Maureen O'Hara, Richard Haydn and Robert Young more than capable supports. Yet... Belvedere's superiority is never in question: when asked at *what* he works, he simply and unequivocally states, "I am a genius".

Says it all really! There are so many witty one-liners, and amusing touches in comparison to many modern films on the same themes of babysitting and American suburbia. This is one of the most enjoyable films of its era; propelled to lofty heights by Clifton Webb's indomitable prescence. A touch of waspish, queer old England thrust into the picket-fence garden of American suburbia.

Clifton Webb became a major star for a while on account of this film, in which he plays an eccentric genius who comes to live in the house of a young couple as a kind of general purpose servant-maid-tutor-savant-philosopher-critic. There was no end, it seems, to what Mr. Belvedere could do, and do extremely well. Walter Lang directs this pleasant picture with much skill, if not inspiration, and as Webb's employers, Robert Young and Maureen O'Hara make an attractive couple.

Webb was a strange case. A huge star on the stage, his film career lasted less than twenty years. He was well into middle age when he started making movies, and at first he tended to play snobs and supercilious characters in general, starting with Laura, in 1944. Till Sitting Pretty came along he had appeared only in dramatic films, usually as a villain. Overnight, it seems, he was transformed, from upper class bad guy to loveable eccentric, and for a number of years he became a quite popular and unlikely star of often nostalgic films. Along with Charles Coburn, he was one of the last true Victorians of the movies, and as such a reminder of a more formal but also more individualistic time during in the postwar years. Sitting Pretty is an excellent showcase for Mr. Webb's unique brand of humor, as he managed to be superior and priggish but never mean-spirited.