About two years ago, I posted this elsewhere on the site.

Now someone famous is remaking this movie in the typical dynamic go-getting approach of the day, i.e. unnecessarily, so before they make a royal corn beef hash of it, I thought I’d remind you of the original.

Harvey with Jimmy Stewart used to be held as a quiet favourite by hardcore olde-Hollywood movie fans, and over time, possibly for reasons of political correctness to do with part of the subject matter and possibly by the sheer general attrition of attention that affects the status of some older movies, because everyone’s keeping up with the ‘latest and greatest’ - we could call it plain critical ignorance for short - has become the even quieter favourite of somewhat fewer fans.

So, after they’ve pretty much inevitably gone right ahead and ruined it in remake, take the time out to try and catch the unspoiled original.

HARVEY (1950)

Now almost forgotten, this used to be on TV enough that it was considered something of a family classic.

The reason it doesn’t get a run much now is probably partly because it’s black and white, but mostly because the hero is an alcoholic, and that’s pretty much presented as a positive thing. Just imagine trying to pitch that one to a studio today. Yep, folks, we got us a loveable kid-friendly picture for the whole family about a guy who drinks in every scene in the movie and has an imaginary buddy who’s a white rabbit over six foot tall. You’d probably land in the nuthouse on the first bounce.

Anyway, it’s a shame, because this is one of those rare mold-denying timeless Hollywood studio pictures that effortlessly maintains a blithe tone of unforced farce. It captures a kind of idealized small-town life and makes its little points about the interesting and different ways people have their heads bent by everyday life, without the slightest strain or pain on the part of either movie or audience. (In a way it’s kind of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest territory thematically, but makes the same points doing a lot less overt hard work.)

Jimmy Stewart is at his most absent-mindedly likeable as Elwood P. Dowd who apparently has blithering piles of money and lives in a huge house, but doesn’t care about any of that, he just likes to go out drinking in low-life bars where he cheers everyone up with his generosity, unfailingly gentle, accepting manner, and also confuses them with his invisible giant rabbit buddy, Harvey.

His sister is a little more concerned, mainly because Dowd’s harmless eccentricity interferes with her plans to marry off her social-climbing hatchet-faced daughter, due to everyone figuring he’s mad. Also she’s starting to see the rabbit as well, which is bothering her.

Naturally, she tries to have Elwood committed, and naturally this works out a lot easier and better on paper than it does in real life, since the staff at the fairly demented local insane asylum wrongly assumes that she’s the jittery lunatic and that Dowd is just a regular happy guy, which on the surface of things is admittedly an easy mistake to make.

The story unfolds in a leisurely amiable series of confusions, and in general Harvey kind of feels like Arsenic and Old Lace (right down to one of the same cast members, Josephine Hull, who won an Oscar in this as the sister) only with a lot less pushing and running around. Stewart probably never had a better vehicle for his most familiar screen persona than this picture. The on-screen explanation for how his character became that way comes late in the piece, and is the perfect rationale. Everything that’s done here is done well. If you’re not familiar with Harvey, or haven’t seen it in years, make the effort to catch it. It’s a real one-off.

(10 out of 11, on the MPHOAH scale)