The Miracle of Morgan's Creek (1944, Preston Sturges) (Patreon)

60/100

Spoilers ahoy.

Second viewing, last seen 1998. Still consider it second-tier Sturges, and while I'm overdue to revisit Hail the Conquering Hero as well, it seems pretty clear that Eddie Bracken is my fundamental problem with those two movies. His stuttering, sputtering nebbish routine wears on me quickly, and makes many gags so predictable that I'm just impatiently waiting for them to land; best example is the ending, which spends a small eternity watching Norval coo over the babies in the nursery before finally getting to his inevitable question and equally inevitable panic attack. Sturges stages the scene perfectly, aware both that we needn't hear the dialogue and that it'll be funnier if we don't, but the explosion, when it finally happens, just doesn't make me laugh. There's no finesse to it, or maybe it's a matter of Bracken's persona being so put upon. (As opposed to, say, that of Don Knotts, whose characters always fancy themselves as far more worldly and competent than they are.) I'll also submit that Betty Hutton never fulfills the daffy promise of Trudy's introduction, in which she lip-syncs to a basso profundo recording for a group of soldiers. That's not really Hutton's fault, to be fair—Sturges likely felt that his premise was plenty outrageous enough without making Trudy a full-fledged screwball buzzsaw. Still, compared to Stanwyck in The Lady Eve and Colbert in The Palm Beach Story and Lake in Sullivan's Travels, she comes across as disappointingly bland. 

On the other hand, Diana Lynn, as Trudy's younger sister, feels right at home here, delivering sardonic zingers with a practiced ease that belies her age (16, apparently, though Emmy's said to be 14). Maybe I'm projecting, but it feels as if Sturges' heart is really with her; there's something hilariously pure about the bit that sees Trudy ineffectually tap their father on the head a few times until Emmy, exasperated, finally grabs the sap herself and knocks him out with one mighty clonk. I mean, that's your heroine, right? In any case, Morgan's Creek is consistently riotous around the margins, nearly compensating for what I perceive as the hole at its center. Demarest gets what might be his strongest showcase, making a meal of Dad trying to cue Norval's escape from jail and repeatedly smacking up against a wall of obliviousness. (Bracken's tolerable to me there, as he's asked to do little except fail to understand. Dimwitted he can manage; it's the sickly-sweet and the frenetic that grate for me.) Loved the Justice of the Peace gamely struggling to perform the union of Kockenlocker and Ratzkywatzky, confidently getting both names wrong in a different way each time. Bringing McGinty and The Boss back doesn't make any sense, given that the former was Governor for only about 10 hours before they both fled to South or Central America or wherever, but who cares so long as their presence, and those of the reporters, allows for the fast-paced ping-pong dialogue at which Sturges excels (rather than the pratfalls at which he does not so much excel). I just wish there were less of Norval repeating someone's previous line in a calm voice only to shout "WHAAAAT?!?!? " after a brief delay, and more lines like "Listen, zipper puss. Someday they're just gonna find your hair ribbon and an axe someplace. Nothing else. The Mystery of Morgan's Creek."

Also—and I realize this is probably an extreme minority opinion—I don't like the finale. Sturges creates a situation so fraught (for its era) that he was barely able to get the film released, then resolves everything not via character, or even a misunderstanding (I remember trying to rationalize, mid-film the first time around, how Norval, despite his having been at the movies all night, could somehow turn out to be the man Trudy can't remember marrying and fucking; that would be the fully "respectable" twist), but with a deus ex machina national news story. I suppose it's consistent, in that Norval got into the jam through no fault of his own and likewise gets out of it through no virtue of his own (unless one assumes that God has rewarded his kindness by splitting three zygotes), but it's too random to be satisfying, imo. Plus, as much as I try to place myself in the mindset of a '40s viewer for whom protecting Trudy's reputation outweighs all else, I still can't help thinking about the babies' biological father, who I guess we're supposed to assume either gets killed in combat or was so drunk himself on the night in question that he won't recognize Trudy in the photos plastered on every front page in America. This is one weird-ass happy ending, and while I can't imagine that Sturges would have started typing page one of something so potentially combustible without knowing exactly where he was headed, it nonetheless feels as if he wrote himself into a corner and had to flail his way out.