Miracle au village

From the very start they're off and running. Even under the opening credits cast members are seen frantically gesticulating and flailing. And the movie has hardly begun.

So what's to be done with the next 98 minutes, if one begins climatically sweating and pulsating? Ease up the pace a bit to allow viewer to catch his breath?

Not Director Sturges: he continues to plow through this comedy at breakneck speed, as though any repose might prove fatal.

We get two super energetic starts--Bracken and Hutton--and a cast of obedient supports obeying the eager director's every frenetic command. We end with one of the screwiest screwball comedies of the forties.

This film has acquired a devoted following of supporters who find "Morgan's Creek" very funny, along with a goodly number of detractors, who see it as an essentially strained and bloated one-joke yarn.

As usual, Sturges makes sharp social comments along the way and handles large groups with Capraesque skill. But that he manages to maintain his unrelentingly breathless pace throughout the shoot may be the real miracle of Morgan's Creek.