Film Forum

(1938) Jean Arthur’s screwy family – Lionel Barrymore, Ann Miller, et al. – straighten out suitor James Stewart’s crusty plutocrat dad Edwards Arnold, in Capra’s Oscar-winning (Best Picture and Director) comedy classic, adapted from Kaufman & Hart’s Pulitzer-Prized stage sensation. Approx. 127 min. DCP.

Reviews

“You Can’t Take It With You balances its Republican economic principles with a democratic fantasy of nonconformity in an isolated world in which doing one’s thing is elevated to a spiritual value. It is an infectious, all but irresistible film whose virtues are in the broad but delightful playing of its ensemble cast and in the director’s often masterful orchestration of comic business.”
– Joseph McBride

“Capra has a touch of genius with a camera: his screen always seems twice as big as other people’s, and he cuts as brilliantly as Eisenstein (the climax when the big bad magnate takes up his harmonica is so exhilarating in its movement that you forget its absurditity).”
– Graham Greene

 “Shangri-La in a frame house.”
– Otis Ferguson

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