You Can’t Take It With You
1938, NR, 127 min.
D: Frank Capra; with James Stewart, Jean Arthur, Lionel Barrymore, Edward Arnold.

Based on the antic stage play by George S. Kaufmann and Moss Hart, this Capra film earned Oscars for the film and the director. With her impeccable timing and idiosyncratic delivery, Jean Arthur plays a girl who must introduce her fiancé and his parents to her decidedly eccentric family. The pace is fast and furious and the scales tip quite forcefully on the side of living for the moment. Frank Capra in retrospect called this the “first hippie movie.”

This article appears in January 11 • 2002.

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Marjorie Baumgarten is a film critic and contributing writer at The Austin Chronicle, where she has worked in many capacities since the paper's founding in 1981. She served as the Chronicle's Film Reviews editor for 25 years.