| RATING: | 100% |
| FORMAT: | DVD |
Superior seriocomic look at the dire poverty resulting from generalized economic recession. This is a self-reflexive work from a director (Preston STURGES) eager to do what his alter ego here also wants to do: Something serious about a social condition he has little personal l experience of.
The guilt and shame of the rich when confronted with abject poverty is well-presented in their inauthentic desire to wear tramp's clothes to find out what it is like to be one. As well as their belief that giving money to the poor could ever make them rich.
The hero does find out all about the bitterness and resentment of the poor as well as the restorative value of laughter and that he is finally a comedy director - not a tragedian. Along the way there is a fine sense of silent comedy - as befits a tribute to the great comics - and of the almost spiritually-uplifting quality of good humor, shared with others.
Veronica LAKE is excellent and handles comedy well, as well as her innately pouting sexuality. She helps make up for the general lack of in-depth characterization of the other performers.
Although the film starts slowly with a skit of the kind of movie the eponymous director does not want to make, then becomes the kind he does (O, Brother, Where Art Thou) before returning -triumphantly - to the sort of movie both he and Sturges are best at. Better than Trading Places because more insightful.
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