Bringing Up Baby

Bringing Up Baby
This film has been preserved in the National Film Registry in 1990.

Bringing Up Baby is a 1938 American screwball comedy film directed by Howard Hawks, and starring Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant. It was released by RKO Radio Pictures. The film tells the story of a paleontologist in a number of predicaments involving a scatterbrained heiress and a leopard named Baby.

Why It’s Bringing Up Baby

1. A lot of the film's characters are hilarious and memorable, especially the central duo. There’s also incredible acting and dialogue
   • When Katherine Hepburn was pushed towards the female lead role, the heiress Susan Vance part was tailored for her. Even though she had never acted in a screwball comedy before, she still manages to pull of her role
   • Cary Grant’s portrayal of the male lead was done in the style of comedian Harold Lloyd.
2. Howard Hawks’ style of filmmaking was anathema to the studio system, who despite being beloved for his style today, was once seen as an iconoclast with expensive, unprofitable movies. Hawks was approaching screwball comedy fairly late in the game, and he was determined to push the envelope for what was permissible, resulting in what's considered one of the most iconic screwball comedies ever created.
3. While the film may be a comedy, it contained a deeply unapologetic tone and dark palette.
4. As usual, Hawks’ characters are repressing their feelings in an attempt to seem realistic and honest. Susan Vance and David Huxley are so repressed, they're almost psychotic.
   • David Huxley – first seen wrapped in a lab coat and being denied s*x by his future wife – is unsure of his masculinity
   • Susan Vance is an immature liar who likes to start fights and the 1930s equivalent of a stalker.
5. Considering this is Grant and Hepburn's second of four films, the two central stars still play off each other surprisingly superbly, and share great chemistry with each other.
   • The film's first half is like eavesdropping on a relationship. While the world portrayed is familiar from other films about the wealthy – golf courses, mansions, nightclubs, museums, country estates – it's a weirdly depopulated one where only Hepburn and Grant make any difference.
   • After the introductory scenes, nearly ten minutes pass where the main duo are the only characters in the film. It was amazing that Howard Hawks could sustain their, breezy, bantering tone for so long.

The Only Bad Quality

1. While the film's first half does an amazing job in terms of handling the humorous bantering, the second half turns out to be extremely hammy. Large chunks of screen time are given to old-timers performing dialect humor or retrieving stage routines from earlier in their careers. There are tons of surprisingly weak plot twists (not one but two leopards, not one but two emasculating Amazons, not two but three tiny blowhards) which eventually become so ridiculous that nothing in the story matters anymore.
   • The dirty jokes become extremely blunt: a bone in a box, Huxley in a negligee, the back of a dress ripped off.