‘My Man Godfrey’ (1936)
“Your problem, Colin,” my therapist, Dr Horatio Magma, informed me, “is that you have a rabid need for your cultural diet to be extremely crazy and intense. Try dialling it back a bit.”
“That’s a bit rich coming from someone who’s written three atonal string quartets!” I countered.
“You leave my music out of this! Anyway, try easing back on the intense movies, books and music. You ever listen to The Archers?”
On leaving his office I wanted to tell Dr Magma to go fuck himself. He’s a good therapist but where the hell does he get off telling me what to watch? I like intense, crazy shit. In fact, the crazier the better! In my world there’s no such thing as “too extreme”. And then I watched ‘My Man Godfrey’ (1936) which, if there is a film crazier, funnier or more truly bonkers then I’m not sure I want to see it as it would possibly break me (although it would also be the way I would want to go).
The story goes like this — rich, spoilt sisters Cornelia and Irene are out on a scavenger hunt where the first person to bring back a “forgotten man” (homeless guy) wins. At the local dump they find Godfrey. Cornelia, unsurprisingly, offends the hobo who then decides to go with Irene to help her beat her snooty sister (but also to check out what the offensively indulgent lifestyle of the wealthy is like). Irene gets a little carried away by winning (and by Godfrey himself who seems quite charming in a filthy sort of way) so impulsively asks him to become her family’s butler. You see, her family — sister, mother, father etc — are a little… eccentric, so staff can be hard to hold onto.
Seeing this as preferable (just) to living rough Godfrey takes the job and before he knows it is thrust into the household of the Bullock family where he discovers that there are all, pretty much, full-blown off the wall fucking bonkers. Even Irene, who seemed relatively grown up at first, is as bat-shit as the rest. But he likes her, is determined to remain level headed and do his job properly.
Can Godfrey survive this madhouse? Can he help Irene act responsibly, maybe grow up a little or even able to make her own breakfast? Or will these warring sisters snag him in an elaborate trap, a trap driven either by jealousy or desire?
Good god, I think of all the screwball comedies I’ve seen that ‘My Man Godfrey’ might just be the screwiest. The level and intensity of the wit and sparkle is relentless! I woke up the morning after watching it almost in pain, feeling like I’d been to one of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s parties and got beaten up by Dorothy Parker. And I hadn’t even been drinking.
Once we are introduced to the Bullock family the film flies off into crazy land, starting off (starting!) with a horse in the library and getting sillier from there. VERY silly. “This family needs discipline!” the father yells at one point but, as every parent or child knows, that’s the signal to get even more out of control, which they enthusiastically do.
At one point a character, when told the place resembles an insane asylum, remarks — “All you need to start an asylum is an empty room and the right kind of people.” And that’s certainly what you’ve got with ‘Godfrey’. Except ‘My Man Godfrey’ doesn’t take place in an empty room but a glittering world that’s as sparkling as the dialogue. This movie is gorgeous. In terms of shimmering beauty it’s almost up there with ‘Last Year at Marienbad’, except ‘Marienbad’s world isn’t quite so insane, which is a sentence I thought I’d never write. There is so much depth and detail that, combined with the script, I’m not sure if this is a loving caressing or a full-on assault on the senses. It is wonderfully directed too.
This is also an extremely sexy film with lots of talk of sewing on buttons, coy glances whilst furiously rubbing crockery and remember — “There are different ways of having fun.”, and we all know what those ways are. The scene between Irene and the maid is particularly filled with churning, female sexual frustration.
Sure, the ending is a bit unbelievable but I found it worked when I realised I had shifted with whom I was identifying. For the first half I was seeing it all through Godfrey’s eyes, being stunned at entering this crazy world and trying to make sense of it all and keeping a calm head whilst everyone else loses theirs. But by the end I had become Irene, looking for a way out of the madness and, let’s face, don’t we all become a little childish and needy when we fall in love. I know I certainly do. It’s not just about giving someone a hand up but knowing we also all need to take someone’s hand sometimes. “Godfrey loves me! He put me in the shower!” And I can see her infantile point: I’d think the same if he did that to me.
Watching ‘My Man Godfrey’ was so exhilaratingly exhausting that it made me think that it was, possibly, a good thing the Second World War came along and calmed America down a bit, uncork all that delirious effervescent fizz that needed released. Sure, it meant the nation was depressed, traumatised and sitting with Bogart drinking ‘In A Lonely Place’ (1950) a few years later but if the country had kept up the pace it had in the 30s the national psyche would’ve genuinely ended up in an insane asylum (maybe it did in the end?).
Hell, even the Depression didn’t quite ground the country and just seemed to make things crazier. After all, poverty, unlike death on the battlefield, can be escaped from, either by luck or imagination. The Depression left millions out of work and homeless but it also gave us ‘King Kong’ (1933) and ‘Sullivan’s Travels’ (1941). People could get through the good old fashioned American way via Hollywood movies — through that infrastructure of denial (if anyone can think of a screwball comedy about Pearl Harbor made in the 40s then let me know).
‘My Man Godfrey’ is glittering, charming, sexy and funny to an extent I never thought possible. Whatever part of my brain that processes comedy, love and life feels fused, blown-out and fried, and it was bliss. There are different ways of having fun but there’s nothing quite like this way.
