You Can't Take It with You (1938)

Tony Kirby, a straight-laced banker’s heir is in love with Alice Sycamore, a receptionist who works for his father and comes from an unconventional family.

A prospective in-laws party is ruined when Tony forces the get together one day ahead of schedule.

To complicate matters, Anthony P. Kirby needs to buy the Sycamore home in order to push the biggest munitions monopoly deal in U.S. history.

For some reason I had the wrong idea about this film.

My impression was that the Sycamore family was quite wealthy. and so, the messages that one should simply do whatever one thinks is fun; that one needn’t pay taxes if one doesn’t believe them; that one could manufacture dangerous and illegal explosives in one’s home while claiming ignorance that maybe one should not be doing these (and other) activities were incredibly hypocritical and irresponsible.

Sure, one could do all those things, if one had enough financial clout the avoid financial and legal consequences, …but what about everyone else?

Simply put, the film violates Immanuel Kant's Law of Nature Formula.

For decades I felt the film had also rubbed me the wrong way, and I did not feel the inclination to revisit it.

Due to the screwball comedy’s wide acclaim, (it’s a double Academy Award winner: Best Picture and Director!) I recently decided to screen it a second time.

The film could be construed as a variant on A Christmas Carol, other than the fact that it never even bothers to attempt Dickensian psychological depths. Set it a Christmas time and it becomes a perfect holiday movie.

No, the film never openly says that the Sycamores are rich.

And yet, they own desirable property, they have servants (do they even pay them salaries?), they feel no pressure to sell their property despite none of them really working, or not effectively working: a writer hasn’t published anything, and a dancer and a painter are ‘terrible.’

Danny Peary describes the family as lower middle class, to which I saw pshaw: These folks are well off: They live off their wealth but have simply decided not to bother to keep up with material luxuries, and so they live in a dump.

Either that, or the film is an out and out social Fantasy (that's right, I'm calling this one a Fantasy, call it a small scale Utopia, whatever; deal with it!) where a commune could live comfortably, on no apparent sources of income, and still manage to have hard cash handy for, at least, small emergencies.

The other option is that the film was not really meant to have a universal message: Its anti-materialistic philosophy is aimed squarely at people precisely like its villain: Only to the extremely wealthy, or financiers obsessed with financial gain.

If you can't afford it, this philosophy is not meant for you.

But if so, its universality dissipates: Why was this film so popularly beloved?

In late 60s, with the rise of the counterculture, this could easily have become a cult icon, well beyond its release date – but it was widely acclaimed much before that.

I can see some connections with kooky family shows like for example, The Addams Family, which also held some countercultural appeal, and which also happened to be a fantasy about a wealthy family.

None of what goes on in that house makes any sense: It's a fireworks factory, a novelty manufacturing workshop, a revolutionary pamphlet press, a candy kitchen (which is apparently the only true source of income,) in addition to the fact that like Le Roi de cœur (1966) (another problematic Utopia movie) it's home to a bunch of madmen (or failed artists, if you prefer,) including a dancer.

I managed to laugh at some bits, but my wife laughed in many more other instances – she enjoyed the humor much more than I, but what can I say: Its philosophy still rubbed me the wrong way, particularly when Lionel Barrymore states that he doesn’t pay taxes because he doesn’t believe in them, reminding me of the current president.

See Kantian Law, above.

Another irritant is when a collection is taken up by their friends to bail them out. Can these folks truly not afford bail? When the Sycamores decide to sell, they don't reciprocate and ignore the terrible consequences of the sale on their friends and their community!

A similar scene works in It’s A Wonderful Life, but it just doesn’t work here.

The Sycamores screw all their neighbors with the sale of their home, fact which is ignored because we are told friends are more important than money, and because we had seen the neighbors take up a collection.

Yeah, we are told it, but we see no evidence that the Sycamores value their neighbors' homes, businesses and neighborhood in return.

In fact, we see the opposite.

And the reason for the sale?

A young lady's whim. She has a tiff with her fiancé despite that obvious fact that they both love each other and will eventually end up together.

For this, a neighborhood full of families is put in jeopardy.

Not only are these people 'nonconformists,' but their skulls are full of fluff.

A movie which is supposedly about friendship, money and material possessions is incredibly naïve about precisely its chosen subject.

There’s enough there for general audiences to enjoy so I’m gonna recommend it, just don’t try to think too hard about what the film is attempting to preach at audiences which simply don’t merit it.