A Film Canon

An imperfectly administered local anaesthetic, Harvey successfully targets a constellation of noir anxieties - alcoholism, incarceration, mental instability - but at the expense of inducing the more pervasive, deadening numbness encapsulated in Elwood Dowd's (James Stewart) relationship with ideal, imaginary friend 'Harvey' - a six-foot rabbit - and the mantra to which it gives rise: "You know, years ago, my mother used to say to me "In this world, Elwood, you must be oh so smart, or oh so pleasant." Well, for years I was smart. I recommend pleasant. You may quote me." Unfortunately, this arbitrary distinction between intelligence and beneficence robs the script of the screwball ingenuity to which it aspires, while the residues of cultured wordiness also preclude straighforward sentimentality, resulting in a bland, good-natured, regressive "wisdom". In the process, it caricatures Stewart's trademark, ponderous obliquity into that of an idiot savant, unable to open his mouth without releasing some tortured observation, thereby neglecting the extent to which his charisma - particularly in the Capraesque mode to which the film also aspires - is (at least ostensibly) founded on his idiosyncratic demolition of received wisdom in the name of political change. This is all reinforced by Koster's unwillingness to make any specifically cinematic advances on Mary Chase's original play, as evinced in the overwrought, hyperbolic acting - especially from Elwood's sister Veta (Josephine Hull) - and predominance of long, uninterrupted takes, which create a palpable fourth wall, albeit in such a way as to affirm Harvey as an omniscient, invisible potential, rather than the more concrete incarnation that Elwood perceives, and which is nicely withheld from the audience, with the brief exception of a painted reminder of the cartoon he could have easily become.