My Man Godfrey (Color + Black-and-White)

Well, this is just one of the best of the half-dozen or so top screwball comedies of the 30's. A dream cast plays it light and loose, with the real world of Depression-era America as a backdrop to a love story and a light lesson in responsibility, both to one's friends & family, to one's society, and to one's better nature.

And what a cast. William Powell is the epitome of debonair (what a quaint term: NO ONE is debonair anymore, alas)with one of the best comedic touches and timing in the business. Opposite Powell is Carole Lombard, young, adorable, beautiful and screwy and a perfect foil for Powell's smooth decorum. The supporting cast is first rate: Eugene Pallete the long-suffering businessman/husband; Gail Patrick, the beautiful but bitchy Cornelia; Mischa Auer's deadbeat Carlo; Alice Brady's clueless mother; Jean Dixon's wisecracking maid & Alan Mowbry as the rich & useless but decent Tommy Gray.

Enjoy comedy played by pros to a fare-thee-well. It's all attitude and delivery and body english and it is great! They can't make them like this anymore. Style and class.

The extras are quite good with a nice commentary track by Bob Gilpin and some hysterical outtakes (yes, they cussed back then too!). The print is pretty much clean and a vast improvement over previous editions.


Which Version   April 3, 2001
R. Lichter (Black Point, CA USA)
43 out of 46 found this review helpful

For those of you lucky enough to know, or who propose to get to know, this flick, you've come to the right place. Amazon sells two DVD versions of My Man Godfrey. I've seen both, as well as the VHS, and this one, the least expensive, from a company called Platinum, is by far the best quality. The other DVD, by Madacy Entertainment, is a fiasco based on a terrible print that happens to also be missing a crucial scene. Why Amazon continues to sell it, I don't know.


Ignore irrelevant reviews---get the glorious 2005 Legend restored version--perfect in B&W and great computer-advanced color too!   April 30, 2009
Thomas S. (L.A./Missouri)
22 out of 24 found this review helpful

The "First Time In Color" cover of MY MAN GODFREY from the Legend company is the very BEST-----better than the Criterion version, believe it or not---in part, because on Legend you choose to watch color or black and white. In fact, the Legend version is just tremendous and even the color version is miles ahead of the old colorization processes of the 1980s. But you do not see this information ANYWHERE except at the very end because Amazon has loaded up all these ancient and out of date reviews of OTHER PRODUCTS---not the one listed and shown in the picture. It is terrible confusing. Luckily, I did order a copy of the Legend version with color and B&W and was thrilled, but you might never figure it out based on the utterly confusing mess of reviews of all sorts of different versions mushed together in the same place here.__________
I had seen this film at least twice over the years and thought it pretty good but came across this 2005 remastered version from LEGEND films. I was astonished. It is wonderfully crisp and fresh in it appearance and tripled my appreciation of it. Also, I am not one of those hidebound purists who think computer colorization is an absolute horror. Done well---and this one is done VERY well indeed--it can add a new freshness and insight to its watching. (Granted, it is not the same work of art of its original creators, but one can choose freely between the two versions, as it should be.) I found that by tweaking the color manually and altering the brightness and contrast slightly, with a hint greater saturation, one can get a superb if just slightly antiquey color. Not exactly full Technicolor (it never was--originally filmed in black and white) but a surprisingly great color experience. _________ And since this is not a dark, grim film noir, where chiarosuro of shadow and rays of light brilliantly communicates so much in mood and portent, but is a frothy comedy with light interiors, the color is perfect for lively fare like this. I can't believe people who whine about colorization. I am as big a film fan as they come, and know all about artistic integrity, but this is part of a living, usable past. (No, I don't add diet Coke to my pinot noir.) In any event, color or not, the film is a treasure and should be seen by everyone. (Perhaps first in black and white for historical accuracy, and then in color for the simple pleasure of it in this case.)


A great movie, well presented   August 1, 2001
Daniel H. Bigelow (Cathlamet, WA USA)
18 out of 19 found this review helpful

The Criterion Collection DVD of this, one of the greatest comedies of all time (and one of my ten favorite movies), is a long-awaited and vast improvement over the previously available DVD version of the film. The sound is far clearer, and the picture is crisp and sharp. It is nice to be able to enjoy the movie without having to forgive hisses, pops, and picture skips.

DVD extras in the Criterion edition are fairly extensive -- a radio version of the show, a short but good-natured blooper reel, the theatrical trailer (which was not restored to the pristine picture and sound of the movie), and an unintentionally amusing commentary in which a film scholar laboriously explains every joke as though his mission was to drive a stake through the heart of the movie. The movie is more than good enough to survive its mind-cudgeling analysis, but the commentary is eminently skippable.

No matter, though. The extras are not the reason to buy the Criterion edition of My Man Godfrey anyway -- it is the stellar quality of the movie itself, finally presented the way it ought to be seen.


Magical Lombard Plus Dapper Powell Sparkle in Comedy Classic   May 3, 2005
Ed Uyeshima (San Francisco, CA USA)
12 out of 12 found this review helpful

During Hollywood's golden era, Carole Lombard was probably the most strikingly beautiful actress of her generation and arguably the most talented comedienne. She managed to be both hilariously free-wheeling and uninhibitedly down-to-earth, even as she plays the flightiest of madcap heiresses. One can only speculate what brilliant career lay ahead of her had she not died tragically early in a 1942 plane crash. Fortunately, we have this 1936 screwball classic, likely her most famous film, as a reminder of her beauty, charisma and sheer likeability. Her character Irene Bullock feels like a first cousin to Katharine Hepburn's Susan Vance in "Bringing Up Baby", a scatterbrained, motor-mouthed, persistent-beyond-reason socialite living with her equally eccentric family on Park Avenue. If not for Lombard, this character would try anyone's patience with her impetuous behavior and the childish competitiveness she displays with her sister.

What makes this movie different though is its social consciousness about the thoughtless rich and the put-upon downtrodden, the contrast of which made this particularly apt during the Great Depression. But the grand statements one would expect from a Capra never seem leaden in this comedy as directed by the underrated Gregory LaCava. Instead, they are fully integrated into a story that starts with a society "scavenger hunt" for a "forgotten man". In the city dump, the Bullock daughters find one in the form of Godfrey, portrayed with typically dapper élan by William Powell. Godfrey is an erudite hobo with whom Irene becomes quickly enamored, and in short order, she convinces him to become the family butler. As it turns out, of course, he turns out to be the scion of a wealthy Boston family who decided to shuck it all once he was betrayed by love. He becomes the catalyst for improving the lives and characters of the Bullocks, all the while ensuring he takes care of his hobo friends on the riverfront. Only Powell could play a character that moves so fluidly between bum and butler, though he does falter slightly in his drunken scenes which seem really to come out of nowhere to move the plot along. Powell and Lombard were previously married and divorced prior to this film, and there is a subtle familiarity in their burgeoning relationship that makes their rapport sparkle (ironically, off-screen, he was in love with Jean Harlow at the time, she just beginning with Gable).

The supporting cast is impeccable in characteristic roles for the actors - Eugene Palette in typical comic, fog-horned bluster as the frustrated patriarch (though actually more restrained here than his other similar roles of the period); Alice Brady in full daffy flightiness as the arts-loving mother with her own live-in protégé in Mischa Auer, who plays Carlo as the high-maintenance leech he is (his chimpanzee impersonation scene is priceless thanks to his manic agility); Jean Dixon as the smart-mouthed maid Molly who develops her own crush on Godfrey (though the script gives her short shrift in this development); and best of all, Gail Patrick, who epitomizes the upper-crust bitch-princess as the talon-bearing sister Cornelia (of course, she and Lombard do not look remotely like sisters). It all wraps up nicely though rather fancifully, for instance, Cornelia does an about-face only a Hollywood producer would find credible. And one could argue that the portrayal of Godfrey's hobo brethren is on the sanctimonious side. But it doesn't matter, as the movie glides over the heavier implications of wealth, class distinctions and social injustice with a velvet glove. A true and deserved classic.

I am generally not a fan of colorization, though I have to admit the digital technology seems to be improving as the new discount-priced DVD provides a surprisingly nice transfer with soft, pastel colors except for some of the more elaborate evening gowns at the beginning. The package includes the original black-and-white version for purists and a colorized trailer as well. This is a good alternative to the Criterion Collection DVD priced at nearly four times the price (granted with additional features).