Movie: Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House (H.C. Potter, 1948)
The American Dream is overpaying to buy a historic country house in Connecticut, because you feel cramped in your four-room apartment in the heart of Manhattan. This is a charming, lightheartedly funny film that both celebrates and lampoons the 'we are the best, and only getting better' feeling of post-war America. It is a film about how there are few meaningful constraints for white middle-class American families to pursue everything they want, as long as they don't get high on their own supply.
The film likes the Blandings and presents them lovingly and sympathetically, but there is a reason why it turns Mr. Jim Blandings (Cary Grant) into an advertising executive. He of all people should know better than to fall for an ad for Connectictut property that feels too good to be true, but then again, his entire family seems to have fallen for the idea that they can get and be everthing they want, simply by virtue of being upstanding middle-class American citizens. That may be true in a financial sense, but you still need to listen to engineers, architects and legal experts when building your dream house. The Blandings' resistance to do so, their unquestioning belief that they can and should be fully in control of realising their dream, informs most of the comedy in the film. In the end they do succeed, in part because their black housekeeper saves Mr. Blandings' job by accidentally coming up with a great slogan for the ham he needs to market.
The film begins with a narrator talking about the greatness of New York, sarcastically set against images that contradict his words, e.g. when talking about the best tranportation system in the world, we cut to a crowded metro station with people unable to enter the train. The narrator then breaks the fourth wall and we find out that he is Bill Cole (Melvyn Douglas), a lawyer and a friend of the Blandings, who may or may not be gay. He introduces us to the family, as Jim and Muirel (Myrna Loy) wake up in separate beds. This sets up a sequence in which Cary Grant shows that he could very well have been Charlie Chaplin. In long takes we see him do great physical comedy as he navigates his small apartment, trying go through his morning routine without bumping into doors or being disturbed by falling objects. This is immediately followed by a sharply written breakfast scene where the Blandings' daughters exasperate their father with stories about their 'progressive' school teacher and her stance on advertising. And so, in less than ten minutes and three scenes, the film has employed three different styles of comedy to tell its story, Throughout the rest of its running time it will make use of many more. It's very miuch worth seeing.
