Come and Get It is only 99 minutes long, and is even shorter after one subtracts a lumber-cutting montage up front. The story is organized beautifully into just a few powerful scenes and never seems rushed. It has both economy and depth, and keeps up a pace without sacrificing content. That's doubly impressive considering that its direction was split between two of the names in Hollywood; William Wyler took over after Howard Hawks was fired by Sam Goldwyn. One has to think that the movie was shot in order because the earlier scenes are more comedic and boisterous, full of long takes and overlapping dialogue we associate with Hawks. The later dramatic passages involve a full family in a social situation, with more familiar romantic conflicts. They look exactly like the work of William Wyler, especially when a major scene takes place on a staircase!

The story grabs us right away. Edward Arnold's Barney Glasgow is an American success story very clearly defined as a pirate demolishing the landscape to benefit his bankroll. This is Arnold before he became an all-purpose bad guy in Frank Capra movies; he's more robust than portly and has more energy than anyone else in the picture. Joel McCrea is again the unsung actor; I'm not sure he was ever even considered for an Oscar. As a responsible son, he provides a quiet alternative to Barney's selfishness. Barney had to make his way in wilder times, and doesn't recognize that his son Richard's lack of aggression isn't a bad thing. Any male will immediately identify with this father-son relationship.

For both comedy relief and sentiment there's Walter Brennan's Swan Bostrum as the "yumpin' yimminy" type of Nordic fool, who turns out to be the nicest character in the story. If one thinks of Brennan in terms of his Rio Bravo days, the actor might be hard to recognize - he's skinny as a rail. Brennan won an Oscar for this role.

Lotta is a vision in spit-curls, knowing she's the best-looking woman in the state but also aware that she's fatally unlucky. Hawks (I'm assuming) gives her the honor of an extreme up-angle shot singing, the kind of isolated emphasis that always sticks out in his wide shots of held scenes.

Twenty-three years later Farmer is playing her own daughter - younger and less experienced but no fool even though she's been raised in a logging town. After the high spirits of the first section of the film, here's where the ironies and regrets sink in. Barney at first thinks he's seen a ghost and then he allows his judgment to slip. He threw away his heart when he married for money and now he thinks that he can get it back again, that he's still the unstoppable force he used to be. The film quickly reveals his interest in young Lotta to be very wrong, practically incestuous. Most people are too intimidated to tell him off, even his smirking secretary, and Barney's only real friend Swan isn't perceptive enough to see what plans he has for Lotta. When she gravitates toward Barney's son Richard, there's going to be trouble.

Come and Get It has a deeply felt sense of nostalgia. In 1936 the 1880s were only as remote as the 1950s are now (incredible) and the hardworking saloon crowds in the beginning with the singing waiters and crooked gambling den are perfectly realized. The women don't appear out of place in their corseted dresses; when young Lotta and her cousin Karie enter a 1907 train car we're just as embarrassed as they are because we aren't immediately aware that they're wearing fashions twenty years out of date.

The separate threads of Come and Get It converge perfectly at the end, with characters that resolve the only way they can. It's still a fine entertainment, 70 years later.

We get a good look at the ugly-mug John Ford regular Jack Pennick in the early scenes, and it's said that Hank Worden is there as well. This picture seems like an unauthorized cultural backstory for Savant, for my grandfather came to Minnesota from Sweden in 1907. But black audiences are more likely to resent the presentation of Glasgow's black valet, named Snowflake; The actor who played him is listed as Fred 'Snowflake' Toones.

MGM's DVD of Come and Get It is a single title in a crop of Goldwyn classics coming out the same week. I have a copy of the much older DVD release and this transfer and encoding are far superior. The picture is sharp and those closeups of Farmer are to die for; the audio brings out all the sweetness in "Aura Lee" and the fun of the band concert at the big party that concludes the show.

The original trailer stresses action and gives the mistaken impression that the whole show is about cutting down trees. There are no other extras.

On a scale of Excellent, Good, Fair, and Poor, Come and Get It rates:
Movie: Excellent
Video: Excellent
Sound: Excellent
Supplements: trailer
Packaging: Keep case
Reviewed: March 9, 2005