Screenpicks

by Sam Adams

Bringing up Baby

(Thu., July 26, 4:15 p.m.; Sun., July 29, 4:15 p.m., Mon., July 30, 7 p.m., County Theater, 20 E. State St., Doylestown, 215-345-6789, www.countytheater.org)

The County’s series of summer repertory continues with a screening of Howard Hawks’ pitch-perfect 1938 screwball comedy, starring Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn. While not quite reaching the heights of Hawks’ His Girl Friday, Baby is a superb contrivance, a delirious concoction of absurd farce raised to dizzy-making heights by the phenomenal talents of its stars. That the plot involves an errant dinosaur bone and a misbehaving leopard should provide adequate indication of the surreal lengths to which reason is twisted in the name of farce, and the extent to which a seemingly simple contraption has the power to transport us beyond any such pedestrian concerns. Hepburn’s character lacks the strength or complexity of Rosalind Russell’s in His Girl Friday, and the supporting performances aren’t all up to snuff, but by the time Cary Grant’s leaping about in a fuzzy robe shouting "I just went gay all of a sudden!" it’s doubtful such concerns will weigh too heavily.

My Man Godfrey

($39.98 DVD)

Speaking of screwballs, The Criterion Collection’s DVD of the 1936 My Man Godfrey offers a new look at an old favorite. Unfortunately, they don’t all hold up so well. Undistinguished direction by Gregory La Cava does no favors to a sometimes clunky script by Morrie Ryskind and Eric Hatch whose frequent moralizing is at odds with the devil-may-care energy that animates the best screwballs. Set in the middle of the Great Depression, the film stars William Powell as "forgotten man" Godfrey, a homeless Hoovertown dweller who’s plucked off a garbage dump by gadabout socialite Carole Lombard and given a job as her family’s butler. Articulate and dapper (David Niven played the role in the 1957 remake), Godfrey serves as a rebuke to the moneyed-but-vulgar family’s ideas about propriety and human worth. Powell plays the swell with his usual aplomb, but he’s stuck in a role that mainly calls for him to alternate between sardonic remove and puffed-out sermonizing. Spoiled brat Lombard gets the plum role, but her character’s so infantilized you can’t help but feel it has more to do with the screenwriters’ view of women in general than any specific class commentary. And speaking of commentary, skip the pedantic audio essay by film historian Bob Gilpin, who sounds like he’s addressing a freshman English class. Those enamored of the film will delight in the hourlong 1938 radio version included on the disc, featuring Powell, Lombard and the emcee stylings of Cecil B. DeMille, but for me, the most enrapturing DVD extra clocks in at just over a minute. You don’t normally see outtakes on a 60-plus-year-old film, and all you really get here are snippets of (mostly) Powell and Lombard flubbing lines. What’s perversely delightful is that they both turn out to have mouths like truck drivers. There’s something thrilling about hearing Carole Lombard yell "son of a bitch!" — which, incidentally, she says about as well as any woman outside of Judy Davis. Considering the stifling nature of the film you’ve just watched, seeing its stars cut loose is positively liberating.

Thrills, Chills and Spills

(July 28-Aug. 26, Prince Music Theater, 1412 Chestnut St., 215-569-9700, www.princemusictheater.org) See Mix Picks.

Stag Movie Night

(Tue., July 31, 9:30 p.m., $5, Silk City Lounge, Fifth and Spring Garden Sts., 215-592-8838, www.voicenet.com/~jschwart)

A collection of "vintage porno from the 1920s, ’30s and ’40s," served up in the usual Secret Cinema style. If you’ve caught previous SC outings into the world of old-school smut (it’s been five years since the last one), you’ll know that "vintage" doesn’t necessarily mean "tame." Though devoid of hairless extreme closeups, stag films (mostly silent one-reelers) can be as raunchy as anything from the Vivid Video stables (and a sight less silicone-inflated as well). Also on the bill: an off-color 1930s cartoon thought to have originated within the walls of the Max Fleischer Studios.

Apocalypse Now Redux

(Tue., July 31, 7 p.m., Prince Music Theater)

Of course, if you’re feeling virtuous Tuesday night, you can skip the blue movies and head to the Prince, where an advance screening of the elongated cut of Francis Ford Coppola’s phantasmagorical 1979 opus will benefit the newly formed Greater Philadelphia Filmmakers, a project of the Greater Philadelphia Film Office that aims, says director Joan Bressler, to consolidate and add to the Film Office’s support network for local filmmakers. Tickets are $15, $10 students. Apocalypse Now Redux opens in Philadelphia Aug. 10.