My Man Godfrey

A wealthy family runs a scavenger hunt for charity; the list requires them to find a forgotten man. Irene Bullock finds Godfrey living at the city dump, takes him to the party, and then offers him a job as their butler. He accepts. Everyone in the house is mad and Godfrey is the sanest person in it. The subject is not romance but who is actually of use. The Bullocks produce nothing and cannot even manage to spend money properly, and Godfrey was one of them before he took the job; the moment the film explains that, the real subject beneath the comedy comes out. The form is drawing-room comedy at high speed: overlapping talk, door traffic, a constantly shifting tone. The film opens at the dump, an image that was unusual in American cinema at the time. It was made during the Depression and takes its subject straight from it; the camps of unemployed men by the river were real. Gregory La Cava directs. The film became the first in Oscar history to be nominated in all four acting categories, and won none of them. William Powell plays Godfrey and Carole Lombard plays Irene; the two had married and divorced before the film, and Powell asked for her to be cast. Who it is for: viewers who like classic American comedy and fast dialogue. Who it is not for: anyone bothered by the ending softening the social criticism; having laid out the problem, the film resolves it through one rich man's goodwill.