Edinburgh International Film Festival 2012: Gregory La Cava Retrospective

When you think of the great comedy directors of Hollywood’s Golden Age you’ll almost certainly reach for Howard Hawks or Preston Sturges, or perhaps Ernst Lubitsch, but it’s unlikely the name Gregory La Cava would trip off the tongue. It’s a pity because as this retrospective shows, La Cava was behind some of the finest and smartest, if not best known, comedies of the thirties and forties. Included in the six film retrospective is the Powell / Lombard screwball comedy of class My Man Godfrey and She Married Her Boss, a comedy with more bite than many of the time. There’s also a chance to see a rare step into serious territory with the melodrama Private Worlds and the best of his silent films Feel My Pulse. Like the other great directors of the period, part of La Cava’s skill was circumventing the restrictions of the Hays code to make stimulating and saucy pictures that got laughs.