What's Up, Doc? (Peter Bogdanovich, 1972) (Patreon)

The tagline for What's Up, Dog? was "a screwball comedy... remember those?"This was certainly wise of Bogdanovich and Warners to clearly label this package -- a far cry from today, when everything is about the opening weekend, so studios insist on selling the sizzle and not the steak. Still, I think the director may have been selling his effort short. Yes, much of What's Up Doc? falls within the screwball category, with Ryan O'Neal and Barbra Streisand sort of channeling, respectively, Cary Grant and an admixture of Katherine Hepburn and Barbara Stanwyck. But there's quite a bit more at play here. Bogdanovich is also explicitly harking back to the silent cinema, and there's a healthy dollop of French farce in here. Quite a stew.

But what I found most impressive about What's Up, Doc? is its precision. I have read a number of comments and reviews citing this as one of the funniest comedies of all time, and I can't really disagree. But I think I only laughed a couple of times, mostly because I was so rapt by how beautifully orchestrated it is. Something like the hallway farce, with mixed-up bags, is fairly standard issue for this sort of film, but so many directors get it all wrong. Bogdanovich's historical knowledge and cinematic know-how are, I don't know, almost Bressonian. In this regard, I felt more like I was observing a meta-discourse about screwball -- not something archly self-aware like The Hudsucker Proxy but an actual master class. For some, I suppose, this level of remove would indicate What's Up, Doc's failure as a comedy, but for a formalist dork like me, it was pure pleasure.

Added points for Bogdanovich figuring out the correct use for Ryan O'Neal. His wooden boy-toy affect was perfect, since he wasn't so much imitating Grant as providing a Brechtian gloss on the befuddled Mid-Atlantic cosmopolitan style. Kubrick worked to invert O'Neal's tendencies, but Bogdanovich recognizes that he has no interior and works wonders with that.