‘The Palm Beach Story’ is a fast-paced, witty and light-hearted ‘screwball’ comedy from the early 1940s, about a married couple down on their luck financially. It stars two of the great stars of the golden Hollywood era, Claudette Colbert (who won the Best Actress Oscar for ‘ It Happened One Night’) and Joel McCrea (star of many classic Westerns as well as Sturges’ classic ‘Sullivan’s Travels’).
The work of American playwright-screenwriter-director Preston Sturges (1898-1959) is little-screened these days but he took the screwball comedy to another level introducing more naturalistic and mature dialogue to the farcical settings of the genre. His work has been praised for its experimental narratives seen as a precursor to other comic writer-directors such as Woody Allen and the Coen brothers. Sturges is regarded as the first Hollywood figure to have established himself first as a screenwriter (his screenplay ‘The Power and the Glory’ was an acknowledged influence on the screenwriters of ‘Citizen Kane’) then as a director, at a time when those roles were seen as separate.
In 1939 Sturges famously offered his Oscar winning screenplay ‘The Great McGinty’ to the studio for $1 in return for the right to direct it, paving the way for deals for other writer-directors such as Billy Wilder and John Huston. His great creative period was in 1939-1943. Four of the five comedies he produced in this time, including ‘The Palm Beach Story’, have been recognised by the American Film Institute as among the Top 100 American comedies.
“like drinking a chilled glass of champagne, down in one. … the zip and zap and zing are things of wonder.” Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian
“The Palm Beach Story is the diamond bracelet of romantic comedies: glittering, extravagant in feeling and in laughs, representative of all the things you might buy in the moonlight and come to regret the next day—but just look at the thing!” Stephanie Zacharek (Village Voice film critic).