My Man Godfrey (1936)

Fantastic!

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

I saw this movie in my teens forty years ago. I saw it again recently. Nothing has changed. It is a great film now as it was 40 years ago..and 40 years before that. Timeless. A classic. The viewer will enjoy the chemistry between Lombard and Powell. Along with a great cast to assist them! (Allan Mowbray is always fun to watch...see Topper). Beautful film.

I love screwball comedies but My Man Godfrey really isn't very good.William Powell is decent enough but the writing is poor and really not very funny.I loved Bringing up Baby and It Happened One Night but this is nowhere near the quality of those two classics.Lombard was crazy but totally unbelievable and hard to believe that Godfrey would fall for her.In fact the whole family was too crazy to take seriously. I love old films and wanted to love it but the quality just isn't there

The Plot.In the depths of the Depression, a party game brings dizzy socialite Irene Bullock to the city dump where she meets Godfrey, a derelict, and ends by hiring him as family butler. He finds the Bullocks to be the epitome of idle rich, and nutty as the proverbial fruitcake. I watched this as part of a 40s festival even tho it was made in the 30s. In a convoluted way the plot is oddly relevant today,, even though it's also highly unbelievable.Here we have homeless men with expensive had speaking perfect English and even knowing French!. But it's a screwball comedy, so concentrate on suspension of disbelief.It's very well written and directed with a face pace.

As the title suggests, this is a love story between a middle-aged aloof homeless man(Godfrey) living in a city dump and a carefree, impulsive, spoiled society girl(Irene Bullock): seemingly a most unlikely pairing, given their radically differing economic situations, ages, and personalities. But, it's also an examination of the relationship between the dispossessed unemployed and the wealthy, especially during a time of widespread unemployment. The Bullocks represent how the wealthy should not spend their time and money, while Godfrey, toward the end of the story, exemplifies. how this advantage might be usefully employed in helping the dispossessed get on their feet.It's clear that Irene was attracted to Godfrey from the time she met him in the dump during a scavenger hunt game. Although, on the surface, Godfrey maintained an aloof posture toward Irene's romantic overtures, Irene had the intuition that Godfrey had probably fallen into bad luck, and was not a hopeless derelict. Eventually , we discover why Godfrey landed in a dump and why he resisted Irene's throwing herself at him, indeed, the romantic overtures of any woman.It's of interest that Carol Lombard, who played Irene, and William Powell, who played Godfrey, had been married and divorced. Nonetheless, Powell insisted that Carol should play Irene.Cornilia: Irene's aloof sister, exhibits an antagonistic attitude toward Godfrey. It appears this is due to a combination of motivations:(1) assuming that homeless men must be hopeless derelicts, thieves, and possible murderers (2)a personal grudge against Godfrey for the way he treated her and spoke to her at the dump(3)jealousy that Irene had rescued a seemingly worthy man from a life of homelessness. In any case, her attitude soften toward the end, and she cried over his leaving the Bullock household. It's interesting that her aloof personality seemed much more suited to Godfrey's similar aloof personality than the impish, impulsive, Irene. But, sometimes opposites attract, in this case, each taking a big chance that the other would prove unsuitable as a mate in the long run.