Despite the love lavished on "Casablanca", Michael Curtiz has never really been thought of as an auteur but no-one can say he wasn't versatile; westerns, thrillers, swashbucklers, comedies and even the occasional musical may account for why he could just be the best jobbing director in the business. "Life With Father" was one of his comedies, based on a long-running and apparently 'autobiographical' Broadway play and it was fundamentally a vehicle for its stars, William Powell, (Father) and Irene Dunne, (Mother).
The setting was New York in the Eighteen Nineties and the cinematography, in Technicolour, of J. Peverell Marley and William V. Skall bathes everything in a gorgeously warm glow. It's really quite delightful even if it has no more substance than a marshmallow with a plot no thicker than a wafer-thin mint. The excellent supporting cast included Edmund Gwenn, Zasu Pitts, Jimmy Lydon as well as a very young Elizabeth Taylor and an equally young Martin Milner. Powell's terrific, (he won the New York Film Critics Best Actor award), and if the film is no "Casablanca" or "Mildred Pierce" it's a real pleasure nevertheless.
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