Bell, Book and Candle

Gillian runs an art shop in Manhattan and she is a witch. Taking an interest in Shep, the publisher who lives upstairs, she puts a spell on him with the help of her cat Pyewacket. The rule of the film sits there: a witch who falls in love loses her powers. James Stewart and Kim Novak had appeared together that same year in Vertigo, and this second film was part of that arrangement. The distance between them lands in an entirely different key here, because the roles are reversed: the woman is the one watching and arranging, the man is the one who does not know. Jack Lemmon plays her brother and Ernie Kovacs a drunken author writing a book about witches. Richard Quine directed. Its flaw is that the premise is charming while the pace is slow, the middle slackens, and the loss of power ultimately amounts to a woman giving up being herself. That choice is uncomfortable now. Who it is for: fans of classic Hollywood romantic comedy and of Novak. Who it is not for: anyone who will find the ending indefensible today.