“The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek” is Preston Sturges’ most gag-concentrated comedy, his smoothest, most artificial, cautious and showmanlike one, his most consciously Mack Sennett-modernized, and his most entertaining film.
Sturges has realized his trademark in this movie better than in any of his other films—that is, to keep a picture exploding from scene to scene with a great frenzy, excitement and energy, by gagging anything either for a laugh or to keep the pace and nature of the movie close to a rout. The most endearing quality of Sturges’ roughhouse is that it is pulled off with speed, positiveness and pleasure; there is no pettiness, innuendo, or the puss-in-boots naughtiness that one finds in the comedies of Lubitsch, or the bored, effortless kind that is so popular everywhere today in which the person is paid to be funny and does so—ennui and all. Sturges enters a film like a runner starting a race—to have a good time for his money, to do the best he can under the circumstances, and under no circumstances to allow anything to slow down. Nothing is smooth or exact, but it is all full of spirit. Even his slynesses—his maneuvering of leg-art into most scenes or his mere aping of sincere movie art—are good-natured, clean, vigorous and in character. Sturges’ films come very close to the energetic sadism of primitive comic strips like “The Katzenjammer Kids,” and they are a fine pleasure.
He has two essentially funny facts in this movie. The first is Norval: played so well by Eddie Bracken, who is beaten to his socks because of his humility, fine nature and dependability by his girl (Betty Hutton), her sister, a fifteen-year-old brain (Diana Lynn) and their father (William Demarest). The story of this picture—the policeman’s daughter who has a child but no father for it and picks out Norval to be the father—is only incidental to the main theme, which is to kick Norval around the movie. Norval is a fine character because he has more than one terrible malignancy to suffer from: he has three to be exact—a stutter, high blood pressure, which he calls “the spots” and which choke him up at important occasions, and the gesture of slapping his hands together to stop his stuttering. Along with that he is a likable youth whom Sturges has dressed well, given a good upbringing and made as ingratiating as possible (by his choice of Mr. Bracken to play the part), so that you don’t feel he is just another punching bag for a slapstick comedy—even though the film amounts to a complexity of slow takes, humiliations, falls, agonized screams and speechless apoplecticisms by Norval. Norval’s humanity and wholesomeness give a roundness and likableness that is extremely important to the movie because no other character gives them. The other funny fact is the relationship of unrestricted loathing that exists between the very smart younger sister and her father. This is a nice clean affair; they hate each other—and rightly so—and this isn’t confused.
A Sturges player must have the same bounding energy as the movie he is in and provide a face and personality that are (save for the hero’s) quite striking but devoid of humanity. The characters he has chosen and directed in this picture are perfect fits—for instance, the dowdy fat hen who plays the blues trombone at the social, Porter Hall’s justice of the peace, who enters the film looking through a stereopticon, the Louise Fazenda character who serves as witness for the young people’s wedding, and the brief but wonderful performance by Akim Tamiroff as the state political boss—all have the great clarity and bizarre provincialism that is demanded. The playing is generally more vigorous than perfect—for instance Bracken’s stutter almost never seems right, but the roughness of pace, speech and manner is all part of the conscious primitivism.
There is a catch to all of this. While Sturges forces his roughhouse as fast as he can from one gag to another, somewhere very far distant and very faint is the story—the movie is in other words hollow. It is a business completely of surface and you are always conscious of both its lack of insides and the extreme forcing that goes on. Unlike the comedies with Chaplin, Keaton or Fields, or those of Clair, the gags are seldom the natural product of the type of character involved, but are set-ups that the character is pushed headlong into. There is always in a Sturges film the feeling that he is above most of his comedy effects and that he is stooping quite far to make use of a comedy of which he realizes the entertainment value, as well as the fact that he realizes that a more profound, devastating satire (which he is more capable of in movies than anyone I know) is impossible in Hollywood and slapstick is a formula to rest comfortably in. It is the difference between feeling that Sennett or the man who draws the Katzenjammer Kids is right in his own back yard while Sturges is actually slumming. Everything comes out extremely well because he has an amazing talent for comedy and moving pictures; he gives a film every ounce of his energy and attention, and he is quite irresponsible anyway, so there is no confusion. This is, in other words, a good movie.
February 7, 1944