The Secret Life of Walter Mitty

Walter Mitty works at a publishing house, correcting the texts of cheap adventure magazines. He lives with his mother and she interferes with everything. So does his fiancée. Nobody asks him anything and he does not object. Instead he daydreams: he becomes a captain, a surgeon, a pilot, a cowboy. One day a woman sits beside him on the train and asks for help; men are after her and she has a small notebook. Mitty takes it and really is chased. Norman Z. McLeod directs. Danny Kaye plays Mitty; Virginia Mayo and Boris Karloff are in the cast. The source is James Thurber's short story. Thurber disliked the film and said so openly; his story was very short and the screenplay added a crime plot to it. Danny Kaye's fast talking and song numbers carry the film and were prepared separately. The daydream scenes are its most expensive parts and each was shot as an imitation of a different genre. Boris Karloff plays on his own horror image, which is among the film's most cited jokes. The matter it treats is submission; Mitty objects nowhere and the film builds that as comedy. Its limit is structure; the crime strand is weak and the daydreams break up the narrative. Who it is for: viewers who like classic Hollywood comedy and Danny Kaye. Who it is not for: the humour has dated, the plot is contrived, and the songs stand outside the narrative.