2008 Alternate Oscars

Fifteen years ago (!) when I started this blog, I roughed out a number of posts I intended to get to ... some day. Here's one for a movie no one saw, then or since, that I really enjoyed in the moment.

When back in the day my mother would complain, "They don't make movies like they used to," I think she meant they don't make witty, light-on-their-feet screwball comedies anymore, those dizzy fast-paced farces they cranked out in the '30s starring William Powell and Myrna Loy, Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert, or Cary Grant and a music-loving leopard.

Except every once in a while, they do — a film like Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day, for example, a clever Cinderella comedy directed by Bharat Nalluri and starring three-time Oscar winner Frances McDormand and six-time nominee Amy Adams. Released in 2008, it was fun, frothy and funny, exactly what you want when you're in the mood for laughs, a little romance and a glass of ice-cold champagne.

Too bad nobody saw it.

The title character, Miss Pettigrew (McDormand) is the world's worst nanny who, thanks to a mix up at an employment agency, finds herself working as a social secretary to a high society flibbertigibbet, Delysia LeFosse (the always enchanting Adams).

It's not that Miss Pettigrew is incompetent, exactly — she's just a tad too opinionated for the rest of the world. But she can wrangle a boy who doesn't want to get out of bed, even if the boy ia much bigger than the ones she's used to.

"You noticed," giggles Delysia.

As the story opens, Delysia and Miss Pettigrew meet on the thin margin between having and having not — one wrong move and they're both on the street — and what plays out is not so much a story about living it up as about discovering what living is for.

Frances McDormand as Miss Pettigrew is neither glam'ed up nor glamorously made plain in the fashion of Hollywood — she's simply allowed to inhabit that long face and those impossible cheekbones, looking at times like the saddest bloodhound who ever lived, at others like that stern third grade teacher who didn't approve of your youthful shenanigans.

Amy Adams, meanwhile, plays Delysia like an Egyptian embalmer has sucked her brain out with a straw — and I mean that as a compliment. It's the sort of role Carole Lombard made her bread and butter.

On the face of it, Delysia is what was known in the parlance of the times as a gold digger, sleeping with three different men, sometimes within minutes of each other, mostly for what they can give her. But don't judge her too harshly — there are very few career opportunities for a woman in 1939 — and anyway, her scheming is so transparent, it has a sort of integrity all its own.

That she also readily accepts the odd, gawky Miss Pettigrew into her inner circle, seeing her not as an inferior but as a soul mate, well, you can't help but like her.

This is a performance that could have easily gone wrong and just the sort that when done right, escapes everyone's notice.

The movie is set in London the day before World War II begins, and both Miss Pettigrew and her low-key love interest, perfectly underplayed by Ciarán Hinds, are old enough to have lost someone to the horror of the last war. With the trivial pursuits of youth in their rearview mirror and with another war coming, they know that everything from now on will be played for keeps.

Their ever-present past adds an undercurrent of wise melancholy to the daffy proceedings.

Miss Pettigrew is a rarity now, a romantic comedy for adults about adults — and more to the point — about adults behaving like adults. It's the sort of thing that studios turned out by the basketful once upon a time but which Hollywood has largely forgotten how to make.

Worse still, audiences have forgotten how to watch them.

Based on a novel published in 1938, I get the impression the book's author, Winifred Watson, spent a lot of time at the movies — shake two parts Lady For A Day with one part My Man Godfrey, add a dash of Jean Harlow and Marie Dressler, garnish with a twist of Frank Capra, and viola! you have a delightful comedy in the style of the old masters.

Serve in a Nick and Nora glass. Cheers!

My choices are noted with a ★. A tie is indicated with a ✪. Historical Oscar winners are noted with a ✔. Best foreign-language picture winners are noted with an ƒ. Best animated feature winners are noted with an @. A historical winner who won in a different category is noted with a ✱.