Bringing Up Baby

(Howard Hawks, US 1938, 102 min., 35mm)

In the mother of all screwball comedies, Cary Grant stars as a stuffy paleontologist who knows more about dinosaurs than he does about the modern woman. This makes him easy prey for wacky heiress Katharine Hepburn who gets her man involved in a series of increasingly funny disasters. This is Grant’s first collaboration with director Hawks, a partnership that also produced His Girl Friday. Hawks, a master of all genres, provided a template for comedy directors for years to come that still holds up beautifully.