Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		3.5
Audio		3.0
Extras		0.0
Overall		3.5

Merrily We Live Blu-ray Movie Review

You Can't Take Godfrey or Boudu With You.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman August 22, 2018

Merrily We Live probably unavoidably will recall My Man Godfrey , a film which appeared a couple of years before this one and which also deals with a supposedly down and out sort going to work for an obviously wealthy family during the Great Depression. However, there are at least two other films that bear referencing in terms of Merrily We Live, including one that competed against it in several categories of that year’s Academy Awards. You Can't Take It with You is properly lionized as one of the standout efforts of George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart, and if the film version doesn’t quite capture the lunatic proclivities of the stage play, it often comes surprisingly close. One of the things about You Can’t Take It With You that ties it to Merrily We Live is its portrayal of a family of eccentrics, with a kind of sweet and perhaps overly naive mother, and in fact both Spring Byington in You Can’t Take It With You and Billie Burke in Merrily We Live were nominated for Best Supporting Actress for their performances (they both lost to Fay Bainter in Jezebel). In the case of the Kaufman - Hart enterprise, the gonzo characters were on the low end of the socioeconomic scale, with the rich folks being generally uptight sorts, which is one salient difference between the two properties. The other film that some may feel has certain similarities to Merrily We Live is Jean Renoir’s 1932 classic Boudu Saved from Drowning, which was remade decades later as the Nick Nolte vehicle Down and Out in Beverly Hills, and which, like both Merrily We Live and You Can’t Take It With You, detailed the exploits of a “less fortunate” type hobnobbing with various movers and shakers.

The Kilbourne family may not be as off the wall as the Vanderhof clan in You Can’t Take It With You, but they come pretty close. Daughter Geraldine (Constance Bennett), who goes by “Jerry”, is putatively the most “normal” of them (quite like Jean Arthur's Alice in You Can't Take It With You), but she’s surrounded by parents and siblings who are at least occasionally on the odd side. Younger sister Marion (Bonita Granville in a really captivating performance) is a fidgety bundle of energy who has named her two Great Danes “Get Off the Rug” and “You, Too”; brother Kane (Tom Brown) considers himself a “forgotten man” (to purloin a concept from My Man Godfrey), at least by his family; father Henry (Clarence Kolb) is a curmudgeon who might have a bit of a drinking problem; and mother Emily (Billie Burke) is a wide eyed naif whose tendency to hire tramps to work for the family typically ends up in disaster. That includes her latest acolyte, an unseen guy named Ambrose, who has disappeared along with the family’s silverware and other assorted items. It’s enough to finally get Emily to realize she can’t continue with her desire to “help” — for about five minutes, anyway.

After a frenetic introduction of all of the Kilbournes, along with their staff which includes imperious butler Grosvenor (Alan Mowbray), the film depicts what appears to be a “hobo” (in the parlance of the day) driving an old jalopy on a winding canyon road, a car which overheats pretty dramatically while attempting to get up a steep hill. The driver exits to get some water for the radiator, at which point the car rolls backward and careens over a cliff. The hapless driver takes off on foot and unsurprisingly ends up at the Kilbourne mansion, where Grosvenor is not about to let him in to use the telephone. Unfortunately, Emily spies the unkempt, unshaven guy and more or less immediately hires him to replace the missing Ambrose. The “new chauffeur” identifies himself as Wade Rawlins (Brian Aherne).

Merrily We Live traffics in near screwball shenanigans a lot of the time, but it never really rises to true soufflé levels, tending to play overly manic at times and rather weirdly flat at others. There is the expected romantic pull between Rawlins and Jerry, though kind of interestingly younger sister Marion also has a crush on Rawlins, and, later just for good measure, a senator’s daughter also starts ogling him. The best bits here are Burke, who is quite charming as a, well, confused grande dame. She flits here and there throughout the film, often delivering lines that sound like non sequiturs even if they actually kind of make contextual sense.

There is one scene late in the film that may raise a few hackles, one which involves African American comedian Willie Best in what might be termed a demeaning, "Stepin Fetchit" type of role as a general store worker who thinks Rawlins is a ghost. Years ago when I was able to track down all of Frances Farmer's films in the pre-internet days, I was kind of amazed to find out that her 1941 screwball farce World Premiere (with John Barrymore) had a similarly potentially offensive bit with Mantan Moreland, playing a kind of wide eyed, shuffling train porter. Interestingly, that scene was excised whole cloth from some versions of the film (kind of hilariously along with some other "controversial" content involving both Germans and Japanese), as I later discovered, and there's no arguing that the scene with Best plays a little tangentially to the main story.

Merrily We Live garnered a handful of Oscar nominations that year in addition to Burke’s nod, including for the charming close harmony song that begins the film, with the entire cast walking down a tree lined street in a rather unusually done credits sequence. (This is ultimately neither here nor there, but I noticed Granville is leaning toward her left kind of unnaturally in several scenes, including the credits sequence, which makes me wonder if perhaps she was injured in some way during the filming.)

Merrily We Live Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Note: ClassicFlix provided a burned preview disc for purposes of this review which should be identical with the retail final version.

Merrily We Live is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of ClassicFlix with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.37:1. This is another nice looking restoration from ClassicFlix, though there are some variances in clarity and grain structure, some of which are due to the prevalence of optical dissolves. There is a nicely organic appearance throughout the presentation, and contrast is also solid. Occasionally the outside edges of the frame can look just a trifle fuzzy, but detail levels are typically very good. There's really no major age related wear and tear, even if this overall effort looks like it may have been sourced from secondary elements, as evidenced by things like a slightly coarse looking grain field at times. (Both the film's cinematography and production design garnered Academy Award nominations that year.) MGM has not always been the best curator of its catalog on high definition, and it's certainly great to see a lesser remembered MGM title from the Golden Age of Hollywood presented on Blu-ray.

Merrily We Live Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Merrily We Live features a nicely spry DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 mono mix that can't quite escape the boxiness of the recording technologies of the day, but which suffers from no outright damage like pops or dropouts. The "Hawksian" dialogue moments (the family tends to all talk at the same time in a couple of scenes) are a little like a thicket at times, but straight dialogue scenes are clear and easily understood.

Merrily We Live Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

There are no supplements offered on this release.

Merrily We Live Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Merrily We Live isn't in quite the same league as You Can't Take It With You, My Man Godfrey or Boudu Saved From Drowning, but taken on its own merits, it's often breezily enjoyable, and it does have a couple of undeniable laugh out loud moments (a finale where everyone keeps fainting at the sight of Rawlins, whom they believe has died, is a highlight). ClassicFlix continues to bring out lesser remembered titles that typically have solid technical merits, and that's once again the case with this release. Recommended.