Search - You Can't Take It With You on DVD

MPAA Rating: NR Content Advisory: Suitable for Children Movie Release: 1938 DVD Release: 02/18/2003 Format: DVD SwapaDVD Credits: 1 Number of Discs: 1 Run Time: 2 hrs 6 mins Studio: Columbia TriStar Members Wishing: 32 Genres: Comedy, Screwball Comedy See Also: You Can't Take It with You

Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman's whimsical Pulitzer Prize-winning Broadway play You Can't Take It With You was transformed into a paean to populism by director Frank Capra and screenwriter Robert Riskin. This is the story of the zany Sycamore household, presided over by Grandpa Vanderhof (Lionel Barrymore), a former businessman who has turned his back on commerce to enjoy life. At the Sycamores', everyone does just what he or she pleases. Penny Sycamore (Spring Byington), Grandpa's daughter, has become a novelist because someone delivered a typewriter to her home by mistake. Penny's husband makes firecrackers in his basement with the help of Mr. DePinna (Halliwell Hobbes), an iceman who showed up at the Sycamore doorstep one day and never left. Their daughter, Essie (Ann Miller), imagines that she's a prima ballerina, even though her dour teacher, Boris (Mischa Auer), assesses her work with, "Confidentially, it steenks!" Essie's husband, Ed (Dub Taylor), who'd rather play a xylophone than work, spends his free time selling Essie's candy, wrapping each package in paper from a used printing press that dispenses anarchistic slogans. The one normal member of the household is Alice Sycamore (Jean Arthur), in love with wealthy Tony Kirby (James Stewart).

Naturally, when the stuffy, aristocratic Kirbys come to the Sycamores' for dinner, the event is a disaster, capped with the arrest of everyone in the household. Hart and Kaufman's third act found the previously judgmental Kirby softening his attitude toward the freewheeling Sycamore clan, admitting that he's never had so much fun in his life. Screenwriter Riskin altered the focus of the play by throwing out the third act and concentrating upon Tony Kirby's father, Kirby Sr., who as played by Edward Arnold is transformed from a stock stuffed shirt into a ruthless, grasping tycoon, eager to buy up every house on the Sycamores' block to make room for a munitions plant. The film thus became the story of Kirby's regeneration at the hands of the carefree Sycamores. Enough of the play's screwball elements are retained to compensate for Riskin's speechifying and plot distortions (though the softening of one of the play's vital ingredients, Grandpa's refusal to pay his income tax, borders on the sacrilegious). You Can't Take It With You earned several Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director (Capra's third Oscar). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Jean Arthur - Alice Sycamore
Lionel Barrymore - Grandpa Martin Vanderhof
James Stewart - Tony Kirby
Edward Arnold - Anthony P. Kirby
Mischa Auer - Kolenkhov
Ann Miller - Essie Carmichael
Spring Byington - Penny Sycamore

DVD viewers can be forgiven for not being as familiar with Frank Capra's You Can't Take It with You as they might be with, say, It Happened One Night, It's a Wonderful Life, Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Meet John Doe, or Arsenic and Old Lace. Those movies have been shown on television (at times to excess) for decades, and have also long been available on home video. You Can't Take It with You -- which won the Academy Awards for Best Picture and Best Director in 1938 -- by contrast, was out of distribution for most of the 1970s and '80s, and didn't come to home video until the early '90s. Columbia Pictures' rights to the George S. Kaufman/Moss Hart play from which Capra's movie had been adapted had lapsed, and also had never included home-video distribution of the film. It was only in the late '80s that the studio got around to negotiating the rights to re-release and extend distribution of the movie; as a result, it's available now on DVD, but arrives in that format without having had the decades of television exposure needed to build its audience and reputation with a new generation (or two) of viewers. This is ironic, since, with its story of a free-spirited, iconoclastic family (led by Lionel Barrymore) battling bureaucrats, ham-fisted cops, and greedy businessmen in order to keep living as they do, and the seemingly mismatched marriage (for true love) between Jean Arthur's and James Stewart's characters, the movie was a natural for '60s and early '70s audiences. The movie holds up well over 60 years on; despite a 126-minute running time, Capra's pacing perfectly balances lyrical, romantic sections and rapid-fire screwball comedy.

The source print is in very good condition, though a bit short of perfect, as there is a fair bit of grain and some minor loss of detail in the tougher-to-transfer scenes. Nothing looks substandard, but one wishes the movie had been preserved perfectly. The audio is a match for the video and perhaps even in a little better condition; the second half of the movie may look very slightly better overall than the first half, but, otherwise, the transfer is very smoothly done and constitutes the best presentation that this movie has received in decades, and is superior to the laserdisc edition in overall contrast and sharpness. The movie has been given a generous 28 chapters that are well labeled and well chosen. The disc opens on a simple two-layer menu with the "play" option in the default position and includes chapter and subtitle selections (English, French, Japanese, Portuguese, and Spanish) plus trailers to a handful of additional Columbia TriStar titles.

The only real complaint is regarding what is not here. Other, much more familiar Capra films have appeared on DVD with commentary tracks by the director's son, Frank Capra Jr. Perhaps the least well known of Capra's major titles because of its later distribution problems, You Can't Take It with You, which offers a rich potential canvas (with a well-known play as its basis and several performers at the outset of their careers -- including Ann Miller, who was still around at the time of this DVD's release, and Dub Taylor, who passed away only a relatively short time before -- as well as a ton of Capra veterans and familiar faces), could have used a commentary track as well. It well might have justified contributions by Capra Jr., Miller, Moss Hart's widow Kitty Carlisle Hart, and perhaps a theater historian, among others. Considering that this is a movie that the studio had to make a special effort not too many years ago to release on home video, one might think that on that basis alone, a little extra effort on this end would have seemed justified. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide