(The whole review is a spoiler, so, you know.) Virtually a 100-minute-long thumb-nosing at the Hayes Office, *The Miracle of Morgan's Creek* is the most relentlessly subversive movie in the Sturges canon. It's one of his very best, too, standing alongside *Sullivan's Travels*. *Miracle*, in fact, may be more purely pleasurable.
The newly released DVD has a pair of informative special features, in which we learn that Sturges submitted the script to the Hayes Office in haphazard, piecemeal installments, thereby obfuscating the blasphemous subtext of the movie. Apparently, the censors never read the script in toto before Sturges finished shooting the picture. While Breen and the other Production Code toilers obsessed over a phrase here and there in the handful of pages that Sturges submitted, they were missing the forest for the trees. Sturges' aim seems to have been to construct a film in which nearly every scene subverts any number of the Code's sacred cows: premarital sex, drunken women, the U.S. military depicted in a non-too-flattering light, foolish peace officers (in fact, everyone in an authority role is made to look foolish), you name it. And of course, the overarching comparison of Betty Hutton's "miraculous" birthing of sextuplets -- at Christmastime! -- to the Virgin Birth is the coup de grace. Sturges even supplies a cow that turns the Knockenlocker living room into an incipient manger. All the while, we're reminded that Hutton is no virgin -- she was knocked up one drunken night by an anonymous G.I. ("I think his name was Ratzkywatzky"). Sturges sneers mightily at the censors by having everyone drink "lemonade" at the farewell balls for the soldiers, to say nothing of Hutton banging her head on a chandelier that is supposed to explain her woozy behavior the following morning. One expects the actors to look directly at the camera and wink. Or at the very least, intermittent title cards blaring "GET it?"
What makes Sturges an artist, rather than just a clever smart-ass, is the humanity he brings to his fierce farce. Eddie Bracken as the 4-F loser is given some amazingly romantic things to say, things that would melt any woman's heart, including the heart of an over-sexed manipulator like Hutton's. In fact, Sturges is adamant that the Eddie Brackens of the world can offer a different type of heroism than what we usually acknowledge that word to mean (e.g., physical bravery). It's a heroism born out of a big heart, tempered by steadfastness, honesty, and ardent loyalty and love. The movie is a celebration of non-showy sacrifice, of the sort Christ prescribed. "Ratzkywatzky", the knocker-upper, the brave soldier, is never heard from again, forgoing one kind of responsibility for another -- the war. But Norval's there, trying to get Hutton out of the several sad jams she's gotten herself into because he loves her. Who's the hero?
The audience will have to make up their own minds, because Sturges is remarkably non-judgmental about these circumstances and characters. The director doesn't frown disapprovingly at the carousing G.I.'s and the small-town girls who provide them "morale", nor does he celebrate them. These people are merely healthy, sexual males and females enjoying life's finest pleasures before those pleasures are snatched away by solitude at the Home Front and bloody death in the theater of war. The people here are rather like figures out of Boccaccio, trying to indulge in a little bacchanalia before the Reaper overwhelms them. *The Miracle of Morgan's Creek*, among its many other virtues, is a vivid reminder of a world at the edge of the precipice, and a stern rebuke to our current commentators who have unaccountably made saints out of this "Greatest Generation". It's a relief to discover that the Greatest Generation folks were lusty savages like our own decadent, worthless selves.
An American classic -- 9 stars out of 10. By the way, I feel I must correct some commentators on the message boards and review pages here, because they're not really grasping the outrageousness of the Hutton/Mary-Mother-of-God comparison. The "Immaculate Conception" refers to Jesus' MOM. His Mom had to be exempt from all stain of Original Sin -- an immaculate vessel to contain and later convey the Son of God to the world. Mary = Immaculate Conception; Jesus = Virgin Birth. If we're going to be the good Christian nation that our brave President wants us to be, we should at least get our mythology straight.
The newly released DVD has a pair of informative special features, in which we learn that Sturges submitted the script to the Hayes Office in haphazard, piecemeal installments, thereby obfuscating the blasphemous subtext of the movie. Apparently, the censors never read the script in toto before Sturges finished shooting the picture. While Breen and the other Production Code toilers obsessed over a phrase here and there in the handful of pages that Sturges submitted, they were missing the forest for the trees. Sturges' aim seems to have been to construct a film in which nearly every scene subverts any number of the Code's sacred cows: premarital sex, drunken women, the U.S. military depicted in a non-too-flattering light, foolish peace officers (in fact, everyone in an authority role is made to look foolish), you name it. And of course, the overarching comparison of Betty Hutton's "miraculous" birthing of sextuplets -- at Christmastime! -- to the Virgin Birth is the coup de grace. Sturges even supplies a cow that turns the Knockenlocker living room into an incipient manger. All the while, we're reminded that Hutton is no virgin -- she was knocked up one drunken night by an anonymous G.I. ("I think his name was Ratzkywatzky"). Sturges sneers mightily at the censors by having everyone drink "lemonade" at the farewell balls for the soldiers, to say nothing of Hutton banging her head on a chandelier that is supposed to explain her woozy behavior the following morning. One expects the actors to look directly at the camera and wink. Or at the very least, intermittent title cards blaring "GET it?"
What makes Sturges an artist, rather than just a clever smart-ass, is the humanity he brings to his fierce farce. Eddie Bracken as the 4-F loser is given some amazingly romantic things to say, things that would melt any woman's heart, including the heart of an over-sexed manipulator like Hutton's. In fact, Sturges is adamant that the Eddie Brackens of the world can offer a different type of heroism than what we usually acknowledge that word to mean (e.g., physical bravery). It's a heroism born out of a big heart, tempered by steadfastness, honesty, and ardent loyalty and love. The movie is a celebration of non-showy sacrifice, of the sort Christ prescribed. "Ratzkywatzky", the knocker-upper, the brave soldier, is never heard from again, forgoing one kind of responsibility for another -- the war. But Norval's there, trying to get Hutton out of the several sad jams she's gotten herself into because he loves her. Who's the hero?
The audience will have to make up their own minds, because Sturges is remarkably non-judgmental about these circumstances and characters. The director doesn't frown disapprovingly at the carousing G.I.'s and the small-town girls who provide them "morale", nor does he celebrate them. These people are merely healthy, sexual males and females enjoying life's finest pleasures before those pleasures are snatched away by solitude at the Home Front and bloody death in the theater of war. The people here are rather like figures out of Boccaccio, trying to indulge in a little bacchanalia before the Reaper overwhelms them. *The Miracle of Morgan's Creek*, among its many other virtues, is a vivid reminder of a world at the edge of the precipice, and a stern rebuke to our current commentators who have unaccountably made saints out of this "Greatest Generation". It's a relief to discover that the Greatest Generation folks were lusty savages like our own decadent, worthless selves.
An American classic -- 9 stars out of 10. By the way, I feel I must correct some commentators on the message boards and review pages here, because they're not really grasping the outrageousness of the Hutton/Mary-Mother-of-God comparison. The "Immaculate Conception" refers to Jesus' MOM. His Mom had to be exempt from all stain of Original Sin -- an immaculate vessel to contain and later convey the Son of God to the world. Mary = Immaculate Conception; Jesus = Virgin Birth. If we're going to be the good Christian nation that our brave President wants us to be, we should at least get our mythology straight.