You Can’t Take It With You (1938)

The title of this post is the Title of the 1938 film that won Best Picture Oscar. “You Can’t Take It With You”.

This night just past I awoke in the wee hours of the morn and couldn’t get back to sleep. I had the TV on and was searching for something to watch. I usually find things on several channels that are aired in the middle of the night that are worthwhile to watch, on HGTV, for example, and other channels. I rarely tune into the movie channels, like TCM or AMC, though in years past I used to pay more attention to those channels. This time though, I could find nothing after a bit. The HGTV programming was stuff I’d seen before, so trolling to other channels I went, and there on AMC was a movie that had just started … You Can’t Take It With You, a comedy, 1938 B&W, Stewart, Barrymore, etc.

I had never seen this film before. I had no memory of ever hearing of it, though since it was a Best Picture, as well as having a life as a stage play before that … I surely may have heard of it, it just meant nothing to me and so no memory was made of it at all.

This picture was so fun to watch in the middle of the night. It’d be fun to watch in the middle of the day too. 🙂 It’s a Frank Capra film. Very interesting, very eclectic, very much something I love.

The whole idea of the film is that when you die, you won’t be happy looking back at your life if you are so money hungry throughout it. Lighten-up. Loosen-up. Love life, be happy.

As a film it told a great tale in a humous way. Here’s one scene clip that I recall:

Internal Revenue Man comes to the house. He wants to talk to Grandpa, Vanderhof. It goes something like this (not verbatim)

Tax Man: Why haven’t you ever paid your income taxes?

Vanderhof: I don’t believe in it.

Tax Man: Don’t believe in it! You still have to pay income tax!

Vanderhof: I don’t believe in it.

Tax Man: Well then who’s going to pay for the White House, Congress, etc.

Vanderhof: Not me. I don’t want to pay for that.

Tax Man: What about interstate commerce? Someone has to pay for that.

Vanderhof: Interstate commerce? Are there fences around States?

and so on.

That’s just part of one scene. Overall, the film is done splendidly and is so fresh for today, considering it’s an early movie.

Stuffed Shirts need to relax and play the harmonica again. Another thing is that they poke fun at the wife of the Banker, who is into alternative spiritual junk.

The Banker and Wife have a son, and that son and Vanderhofs granddaughter want to be married. The Banker family doesn’t agree with it, and feels it will all go away, given time. The plot thickens and the whole thing just jots along at a nice clip, from this scene and that scene, it’s a play on film. It’s lovely. It’s so full of joyous confusion and individualism as whole families.

In this film the Vanderhof man has his family there. Daughter and her husband, and their two children, and one of the daughters is married so her husband is there too. There are servants and family friends there too, maybe some are related. I don’t know, I only have see the film this one time, so far. The point is, the family lived in this house together, and they were all such an ecelctic joyous mix.

The Vanderhof family makes life freedom oriented. They try to spread those ideas to others. There are a few great little speeches to the Banker from Vanderhof, as well as another man. The Internal Revenue Tax Man makes life seem so complicated and tedious and legalistic. [Yes, in 1938 the USA was a mess, and it’s only gotten worse since then!]

This is not a “review” just a little post about the movie.

It’s available on DVD and VHS. Check it out. It’s a “DVD buy” for us.

I view this movie through a Biblical lense. It’s not unrealistic to say that the story is kind of the picture of the tensions between liberty and legalism in Christianity. A slight analogy, not a perfect one.

As well, it has themes of Earthly political liberty vs. Earthly political legalism.

Give me Limited Government. Let me make fireworks in my basement if I want to.
Let me own guns and not register them. Let me just own them!
Let me keep my money.
Let government pare down so that it can support itself if it has to be there. Don’t steal from the People it’s supposedly OF.

That government of the people for the people, etc. is a crock. Government for Governments Sake: For power and glory to The State: For Spread of Democracy 😉 Republic Empire Supreme!

So you can’t take it with you. On your death bed, will you be glad for all you did to earn the money, worry and worry, and fret through the years?

Service to the King won’t be regretted. Service to Mamon will. The Lord God, Jesus Christ, the one whom we have to answer to is pleased to see his chosen living in The Way. It’s not legalism, it’s Liberty In Christ. It’s a good place.

The question is just such as: How long will we toil under this oppresive government. Do we as Christians HAVE to ‘just live under it and accept it?” When will it end. When can we change things.

So I’ll just have to get this movie on DVD and pop it in now and then to get a good feeling about eclectic folks sort-of like myself. 🙂