"Who can say what magic really is?": Bell, Book and Candle (1958)

Bell, Book and Candle [DVD]. Columbia Pictures presents a Phoenix production; screen play by Daniel Taradash; produced by Julian Blaustein; directed by Richard Quine. Burbank, CA: Columbia TriStar Home Video, 1999. Performers: James Stewart, Kim Novak, Jack Lemmon, Ernie Kovacs, Hermione Gingold, Elsa Lanchester, Janice Rule. Director of photography, James Wong Howe; film editor, Charles Nelson; music, George Duning. Originally released as a motion picture in 1958. Based on the play by John Van Druten. Summary: Kim Novak plays a witch who casts a spell on a book publisher (Stewart) to make him fall in love with her. He is most unhappy when he finds out what happened.

Dating from 1958, Bell, Book and Candle, is, if you like, the happy ending sequel to the much darker Vertigo, released the same year. BB&C reunites stars James Stewart and Kim Novak, and they have the same kind of chemistry they possessed in Vertigo, possibly even more so. In a sense Vertigo and BB&C are the same movie, albeit each with a very different style and tone: a beautiful, mysterious woman bewitches, under false pretenses, a man, who later finds he’s been duped. Naturally he wants to remove the spell.

And despite Vertigo’s awesome repute, Bell, Book & Candle may be straight up the better movie (but don’t tell anyone I said so!). For all Vertigo’s incredible visual flourishes, myth-invoking associations, and great music score, the story never really holds together. Moreover, there aren’t that many characters worth rooting for, and it has its share of bumpy passages, the dream sequence in particular. And besides, Elster’s murder plan is patently absurd. 

BB&C, by contrast, has few, if any, weaknesses: its visuals are, in their different way, just as beautiful as Vertigo’s (James Wong Howe’s admittedly studio-bound photography is  … bewitching). Just about every character is appealing, even the snooty Merle (Janice Rule). Thus the crux of the matter: the fantastical story of BB&C is presented in eminently human terms and works just as well as a romantic comedy typical of the era. And Geroge Duning’s by turns whimsical and jazzy score captures just the right mood.

Draped in all those scrumptious Jean Louis dresses and capes, Kim Novak’s Gillian is the lighter, brighter version of Vertigo’s Madeline, if anything even more luscious than she was in the latter film. And Stewart is pitch perfect in projecting his bemused persona to the fullest. The appropriately languorously cat-like Gillian may be the emotional heart of the film (Novak turns in a terrific performance), but it’s the supporting cast, especially a quintessentially ditzy Elsa Lanchester as Gillian’s auntie and Ernie Kovacs as a befuddled, alcoholic writer who steal the show. Bell, Book and Candle is just one heck of a movie, the perfect warm fuzzy corrective at Christmas time (during which the film is set) just in case one is feeling down, rather like snuggling up to a plushy Siamese cat. As the man said, they don't make `em like this anymore.

Further reading: Steffen Hantke, "Bell, Book, Candle, Vertigo: The Hollywood Star System and Cinematic Intertextuality,"  Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik, v63 n4 (2015), pp. 447-466.