Harvey
Harvey is a 1950 film in black and white based on Mary Chase’s Pulitzer play of the same name. It was directed by Henry Custer and it starred James and Josephine Hull. Stewart earned a Best Actor Oscar nomination. In June of last year -2008- American Film Institute revealed its Ten Top Ten –the best ten films in ten `classic´ American film genres, and Harvey was acknowledge as the seventh best film in the fantasy genre. It is set in California, and it is about a good natural, affable, eccentric man called Elwood, Elwood P. Dowd, who’s known by everybody in all bars and saloons in his small town. He’s polite and cheerful and always friendly toward any strangers he might meet with, but he has just a problem: his best friend is an invisible six-foot-tall rabbit (a pooka, a mythical Celtic animal). Wherever he goes, he brings an extra hat and coat for Harvey and he buys theatre and railroad tickets in twos so that they can go everywhere together. His society-conscious sister and her men-hungry daughter try to have Elwood committed to a sanatorium. They seem to be unsure whether Dowd’s obsession with Harvey is an attempt to embarrass them or a product of his propensity to drink or a mental illness. But things are simpler; Elwood only prefers the Harvey’s fantasy to conventional routine. Elwood sums up his lifestyle when, in a later scene, he tells Dr. Chumley –his psychiatrist, who see Harvey too (so Harvey only can be seen by imaginative persons who are fed up with their kind of life) - that his mother used to tell him, `Elwood, in this world you must be oh so smart or, oh so pleasant. For years, I was smart. I recommend being pleasant´.
Harvey is a 1950 film in black and white based on Mary Chase’s Pulitzer play of the same name. It was directed by Henry Custer and it starred James and Josephine Hull. Stewart earned a Best Actor Oscar nomination. In June of last year -2008- American Film Institute revealed its Ten Top Ten –the best ten films in ten `classic´ American film genres, and Harvey was acknowledge as the seventh best film in the fantasy genre. It is set in California, and it is about a good natural, affable, eccentric man called Elwood, Elwood P. Dowd, who’s known by everybody in all bars and saloons in his small town. He’s polite and cheerful and always friendly toward any strangers he might meet with, but he has just a problem: his best friend is an invisible six-foot-tall rabbit (a pooka, a mythical Celtic animal). Wherever he goes, he brings an extra hat and coat for Harvey and he buys theatre and railroad tickets in twos so that they can go everywhere together. His society-conscious sister and her men-hungry daughter try to have Elwood committed to a sanatorium. They seem to be unsure whether Dowd’s obsession with Harvey is an attempt to embarrass them or a product of his propensity to drink or a mental illness. But things are simpler; Elwood only prefers the Harvey’s fantasy to conventional routine. Elwood sums up his lifestyle when, in a later scene, he tells Dr. Chumley –his psychiatrist, who see Harvey too (so Harvey only can be seen by imaginative persons who are fed up with their kind of life) - that his mother used to tell him, `Elwood, in this world you must be oh so smart or, oh so pleasant. For years, I was smart. I recommend being pleasant´.
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