Monkey Business (1952)

The greater the fall into ridicule, the more successful the comedy. Mindful of the cruelty of this principle, Cary Grant (as a scientist whose seriousness rivals the thickness of his glasses) is allowed, under the influence of a rejuvenating drug, to chase after Marilyn Monroe's swaying hips and, having physically regressed to childhood, perform Indian scalp dances. The chimpanzee provided as an accessory delivers the paradigm: infantilisation is also animalisation. In the finale, a horde of chemists, screeching like monkeys, rage in a frenzied dance of disintegrating civilisation. Barren of embellishments, digressions, refinements, stripped of all mood veils, hermetically compact and with the functional beauty of a machine, Hawks builds up the situation, expands it, overdoes the mechanism to the limits of embarrassment and ends up in a state of precise delirium, leaving it unclear whether the frenetic decline of reason makes one anarchically free or bitterly evil. (H.T.)