The Palm Beach story

USA 1942

Dir: Preston Sturges

84 mins

Cast: Claudette Colbert, Joel McCrea, Mary Astor

Rating: PG

The latest Preston Sturges film surprises and delights as though nothing of the kind had been known before.  Farce and tenderness are combined without a fault.  It is funny, wildly funny, not only in visual disasters and off-hand jokes, but with a soaring fantasy that is the opposite of surrealism.

 (William Whitebait, 1942)  National Film Theatre, August 1966

No hint of probability ties the plot.  Some nonsense about Florida and a divorce that doesn't come off, its charm lies in the liberty of the camera to digress, comment, fool, beguile and reassemble life to its own pattern.  The players – Colbert, McCrea and particularly Vallee – fit into Mr Sturges's scheme magnificently.

(C A Lejeune)  National Film Theatre, August 1968

Brilliant Preston Sturges in his wildest, most fanciful vein.  Colbert plays the wife of an impecunious engineer and Vallee is an eccentric millionaire whom she captivates.  For full measure, there is Astor at her most jaggedly sophisticated and patrician … a magical romp.

National Film Theatre, July 1984

Rudy Vallee turns in his all-time best performance as a gentle, puny millionaire in this brilliant, simultaneously tender and scalding screwball comedy.  Vallee's character may be the closest thing to a parodic self-portrait in the Sturges canon, but The Palm Beach story is informed with such wry wisdom and humour that it transcends its personal nature… 

1001 movies you must see before you die