Of all of Preston Sturges’s films, and maybe of all the comedies of this period, this may be my favorite. The comic pitch, the impossibility of separating satire from comedy, the nonstop 5-dimensional humor, the physical clowning in perfect sync with verbal pyrotechnics, the total commitment of the ensemble to absolute craziness, and the demolition of the patriarchal bullshit so dear to both screwball comedy and Americanism — it’s a wonder this thing was ever made. (Hail the Conquering Hero is the closest anything else comes to it.) Folks often say that Sturges at his best is like Mark Twain. This film shows it best. (And mind you, I like almost everything that Sturges did.)
I first saw it when I was in grad school, in the late late hours, on New York City television. I’d never seen anything like it. It didn’t fit any of the formulas and categories I associated with Hollywood comedies. Or any comedies, for that matter. Betty Hutton in her other films is a matter of taste. But Sturges was a casting genius — it’s impossible to imagine anyone else in Trudy’s or Norville’s roles. Miracle — and Hail the Conquering Hero, which followed soon after — are Sturges’s witheringly funny responses to the wartime jingo pressure that made it hard to make urbane films like Lady Eve and Palm Beach Story.
