6.9 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 3.5 | |
Overall | 3.5 |
Hilarious farce concerns a dizzy socialite with a penchant for hiring ex-cons and bums to help tend to her family's needs. After an unshaven writer shows up at her door asking to use the phone, she mistakenly believes him to be a tramp and gives him a job working as a servant. Quickly, her new employee uses his life skills to get the household in order as he falls for her eldest daughter. Constance Bennett, Brian Aherne, Ann Dvorak, Billie Burke star. 90 min. Standard; Soundtrack: English.
Starring: Constance Bennett, Brian Aherne, Alan Mowbray, Billie Burke, Patsy KellyComedy | 100% |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.37:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.37:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0
English SDH
Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region A (C untested)
Movie | 3.5 | |
Video | 3.5 | |
Audio | 3.0 | |
Extras | 0.0 | |
Overall | 3.5 |
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.
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 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.
There are no supplements offered on this release.
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.
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