A Companion to Film Comedy by Horton Andrew & Rapf Joanna E

A Companion to Film Comedy by Horton Andrew & Rapf Joanna E

Author:Horton, Andrew & Rapf, Joanna E. [Rapf, Joanna E.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
Published: 2012-09-06T16:00:00+00:00


Much as the second couple both parallels but differs from the main couple, there are times when their integration into the family also points to difference, much as Rheba's work is differentiated from Essie's play in the shot that introduces them. Consider the one time the film shows us what is actually going on in the basement. For a film apparently about the joys of not working, it is odd how much time is actually spent at the workplace and on details of work. In the long shot that begins the scene, we see Alice's father Paul (Samuel S. Hinds), De Pinna, Poppins, Ed and Donald each working on his specific task. Following this is a series of four shots that show individuals at work: Poppins carving a figure, De Pinna and Paul separately working on their fireworks, and finally Donald, who is packaging Essie's candy. On the soundtrack is a whistled tune emerging from one of Poppins's carved figure, specifically “Whistle While You Work” from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, itself a very recent film (December 1937), reiterating the connection between whistling and work made in Rheba's first appearance. The tune might be taken as celebratory, as it is in the source film, where the song helps turn housework into play and the dwarfs themselves engage in jewel mining that is more aesthetic than purposeful. Moreover, the childlike quality of the dwarfs carries over to the way the men are portrayed here.

Nevertheless, the scene actually revolves around an oscillation between criticism and celebration. The criticism is in line with what we see in the play, a sense that the world of conventional work has become deadening even as Americans in the 1930s might have given anything to have one of those deadening situations simply to stay alive. As if often true with this film, the criticism from the play is made more specific. Donald's work does not spring from his own interest, as work does with the other men in the scene. Rather, he is packaging Essie's candies and doing so with the help of an avian assistant, a crow named Jim, who picks up empty packages and brings them to Donald to fill. In presentation the action both evokes and critiques the assembly line, with the worker crow providing something of the critique, suggesting this is work that befits a trained animal. On the other hand, work as configured here is made better because it is connected to creativity, with Mr. Poppins the most wildly creative of the group and commensurately, as the film has it, the most childlike, previously the most deadened by the grown-up world of work and responsibility.

Implicit in this scene, then, is a key opposition: work as drudgery, mechanical and thoughtless, and work as play, fully engaging our creative and imaginative sensibilities. This is what Grandpa has found with his stamp collecting, which helps keeps the family afloat, and it is what Tony, breaking away from his father, seeks in embracing the Vanderhof ethos through his courtship of Alice.



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