My Movie Journal is Better Than Yours

Notes History

Date Viewed	Venue	Note
07.19.06	Paramount	Tonight is Preston Sturges night at the Paramount! First up is the classic Miracle of Morgan's Creek... I think pretty much every Preston Sturges movie is great... the ones I've seen anyway (and he didn't make that many). He made 8 movies between 1940 and 1944 and the 7 that I've seen are all good. He also used the same actors a lot, establishing a troupe or regulars that, since they were made so quickly, sort of exist in a really precise point in time forever. I can't see Brian Donlevy in a movie (like Kiss of Death) and NOT think of him in Preston Sturges movies. The same goes for William Demarest and Jimmy Conlin. I also associate Eddie Bracken and Joel McCrea with him just because the work they did together was so good. anyway, it was a joy to see this at the Paramount and have a crowd laugh with it all this time later. Sturges' humor is so quick and smart... for them to be so wildly popular in their time gives me a picture of a most idyllic audience... that could laugh at the smartest dilletante social satire and broad slapstick pratfalls simultaneously... And the pacing! these movies must've played like they were on fast forward back then... I think that's a major reason why they still work today... mostly though this is a case of creative freedom burning like magnesium before winking out a few years later. THE SPOTS!!!