Review of Auntie Mame (1958) by Elizabeth S — 15 Nov 2010

Witty as all get out, this is Old Hollywood comedy at its best but also, sometimes, at its worst. For all of its sharpness, "Mame" is rarely anything but unsubtle with its conclusions, its intrusive orchestral score, and especially with its racial stereotyping (poor Ito).

Still, this is funny stuff fairly often ("it was just GHASTLY!"), with Rosalind Russell firing on all comic cylinders as the titular lead. The film is also a cutting satire of several facets of the clashing cultures of the wealthiest Americans; progressive NYC faux-hemians, aristocratic Southern plantation owners, Eastern Seaboard country-club types, and staid urban bankers all come in for roughly equal abuse, although Mame's membership in the first group ultimately encourages us to side with them in the end. If this screwball comedy has an overarching political-sociological point to make (and comedies basically always do, if you parse the laughs properly), it's that class isn't the basis of the liberal-conservative divide, culture is. And that everybody on both sides of this divide are pretty equanimously ludicrous. Jon Stewart would be proud.