The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek (1944)
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The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek Movie Review
The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek is a 1944 screwball comedy film directed by Preston Sturges and starring Eddie Bracken and Betty Hutton. It’s a solid, but overrated movie.
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“If you don’t mind my mentioning it, Father,
I think you have a mind like a swamp!“
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Married and pregnant after a wild party, a young woman and her shy admirer concoct a plan to save her from embarrassment. However, misfortune strikes when their ruse is misinterpreted. Preston Sturges did make one amazing movie that is a masterpiece (‘Sullivan’s Travels’), but other than that one I find his movies to be a mixed bag. This one is among his weaker and most overrated efforts.
Somehow this movie passed the Hays Code censors, probably due to its irreverent tone, but it certainly remains an interesting experiment and one of the most provocative movies released during the early forties. The message itself is actually more on the conservative side, which I appreciated – the intention was to warn women that sleeping with soldiers doesn’t constitute patriotism. But the movie still felt very modern for better and for worse.
My main gripe with it is its pacing. It is so frenetic and chaotic that it led to an exhausting viewing experience. So much plot happens, but not much of it made sense or was important. The character count is also too big, thus none of them made an impact. I did not care for Eddie Bracken in this movie whatsoever. I found his character to be very annoying and his never-ending speeches were even more frustrating.
Diana Lynn and William Demarest were fine and Betty Hutton easily stole the show. Her performance is the best one in the film and her character is the most interesting one. But the movie never fully developed even her character let alone the supporting ones. Probably stronger actors could have elevated these roles somewhat, but the screenplay for me remained too messy and busy without actually being well realized or interesting.
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The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek is very well shot and there are sequences here that are shot outside and follow characters walking for extensive periods of time. These scenes were quite ambitious for its time and they aged so well. The directing is strong, but Sturges made much better movies than this one. The dialogue is witty and fun, but the movie is rarely truly funny, at least it wasn’t to me. In fact, I found some of its humor to be rather forced and that coupled with terrible pacing made it difficult for me to engage with the film. The quick talking and yelling were overwhelming even for a 40s flick.
The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek is an overrated movie that is far from the best Preston Sturges films. While the plot is interesting and provocative for the time and Betty Hutton was quite memorable, other actors were forgettable and the movie was seriously hurt by its frenetic pacing and an overly busy narrative. The dialogue is strong and witty, but some of the humor felt quite forced to me.
My Rating – 3.5
This is the fourth film in my 4our series where I will cover one film per decade that is having an anniversary this year, from 1914 to 2014. Next up is the year 1954 where I chose Sansho the Bailiff. Keep an eye on that one as well.
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