August 24 movie: Bell, Book and Candle. Every time I watch this movie it strikes me the same way: a half hour in I think it's the best movie ever, and by the end I hate it. Kim Novak plays a witch who lives in witchy contentment with her relatives Jack Lemmon and Elsa Lanchester, until she meets and falls in love with normal human Jimmy Stewart, thus losing her powers.
My problem with the movie is that Novak's witch life is portrayed as so marvelously cool. Giving it all up for Stewart seems like an appalling sacrifice. And seeing her change from a sultry witch in black trousers and bare feet to Donna Reed in heels and yellow silk, was just depressing. The message: love makes a woman lose all her power, but her life will be empty and unfulfilled until she debases herself for the man of her dreams.
I still watch the movie when it's on, if only to see Jack Lemmon's bongo-playing beatnik warlock. Ernie Kovaks also has a nice turn as a self-described expert on witchcraft.
4 Comments
jack lemmon as a warlock!! that sounds so cool!!
yeah he's awesome. a total crazy cat. he plays bongos for the hipster act at the nightclub where all the witches hang out.
i've never seen this movie and now i totally want to! i actually like old movies where the feminist angle is really easy to parse, plus i love the way 50's movie housewives dressed and stuff so i'm pretty excited about the idea of this movie :)
I enjoyed the movie years ago; maybe I'll rent it to see when this month's Little Red Riding Hood comes down the path (feels like it will be soon).
I like thinking of Bewitched as life after Bell, Book, & Candle. She loves her husband, but that spunky, witchy side just will come out sometimes, and he puts up with it because he loves her too. In terms of women's power, I think, Bewitched is a really interesting document of mixed feminist/traditional mores in a time of transition.