Review: Bell, Book and Candle

(©Nov 15, 2008~Ciao-originally published at Ciao under my pen-name of pyewacket)

The 1958 movie Bell, Book, and Candle is one of those good old fashioned, delightful romantic comedies and stars a real stellar cast.

Plot

Bell, Book and Candle is one of those classic old fashioned type love stories wit a bit of a twist. I say a twist as most of the characters in the movie are witches.The movie takes place in the Greenwich Village section of New York City, an area that has always had a reputation for the free-spirited artistic type people living there. Being that this movie takes place in the late 1950s, many of the "artistic" type would be classified as "beatniks", sort of the precursor of the later hippies.

Shep Henderson is a rather ordinary man who is a publisher who one day by accident (or was it an accident?) makes a stop by an artist's gallery owned by Gillian where he needs to make a phone call. Not trying to be nosy, yet she is, Gillian overhears to whom Shep is talking to, none other than an old rival of hers, Merle, who it turns out is now Shep' s fiancée. That gets the ball rolling as she can' t stand the idea of her old rival finding love in her life, and she decides to cast a spell on Shep to make him fall in love with her and she gets help in casting her spell by using her Siamese cat named Pyewacket. There is one hiccup in her plan however. One of the rules is that once a witch falls in love, they will lose any magical powers that they have and become an ordinary person without any powers at all and worse she could lose her familiar, Pyewacket.

As you can guess, Shep does indeed fall in love with Gillian, in fact he's nearly obsessed with her, and she now starts revealing herself as a witch, not only that but she introduces him to a whole array of witches, including her brother Nicky and her Aunt who routinely hang out in a local jazz type nightclub and pub where Nicky plays in the band.

Throughout most of the movie it's only Shep who is madly in loves with Gillian, while Gillian guards her emotions and isn't in love with him, he is just a pawn in her plans to get even with her old rival Merle. But what happens?
Is Shep turned off by the whole concept of witchcraft and witches or is he fascinated by it? Does Gillian indeed fall in love? Does she loose not only her powers, but her faithful familiar Pyewacket? For that you have to watch the movie.

Comments/Opinions

This is probably one of the few movies that depicts witches in a good vein, rather than as old hags with long crooked noses and fingers, with warts on their faces or green skin, as is the usual case..think of the Wicked Witch of The West and that is how most female witches have always depicted. Instead you have a female witch as played by the alluring and rather seductive beautiful actress Kim Novak. I also can't help wonder if Novak's character may have been the inspiration for another female witch character with many of the same characteristics, and also had the name Gillian. I'm speaking of the character Gillian played by Nicole Kidman in the 1998 movie Practical Magic. Another similarity is that in Practical Magic, due to an old spell cast by their ancestor Marie, the Owens women (the main characters of the story) can never fall in love, for if they do, their man is sure to die. Yes, a little bit of a twist there, but some of the same ideas as from Bell, Book and Candle.

Another plus is that shows those who are practitioners of witchcraft where there are no "evil" spells being cast against someone. No one in this movie is casting a spell to harm someone or cause someone's death as too many witchcraft genre movies do. In fact, for such an old time movie, it's one of the few that more or less go with the concepts of those who follow the Pagan/Wicca path of life.

As a personal note, whenever someone sees my user name "Pyewacket" which I practically use everywhere, I inevitably get asked, "Oh, your name is like the cat in the movie, Bell, Book and Candle." Actually, I picked that user name long before I even had my own computer and was using the computers in the library. When it came time to think of an easy user name to remember, yes I did pick Pyewacket, not so much due to the movie, but do happen to have a black cat, named, as you can guess Pyewacket.

As a bit of historical trivia, the name Pyewacket, actually predates the movie Bell, Book and Candle by a real long shot and dates back to the Medieval England days. The name was usually associated with witches who had a black cat, as traditionally, Pyewacket was always the name of black cats, rather than like the Siamese one in Bell, Book and Candle.

I absolutely love this movie and usually make it one of my Halloween movie traditions to watch each year. It's sweet, charming and a good old fashioned Hollywood type love story that was so popular in the 1950s and early 1960s. They rarely make movies like this anymore.

I would rate this movie 9 out of 10 for the brilliant storyline, it's comical nature, good old fashioned fun to watch, and a magnificent cast of characters and actors. A real must see movie.

Cast

Shep Henderson........James Stewart
Gillian Holroyd.............Kim Novak
Nicky Holroyd...............Jack Lemmon
Aunt Queenie Holroyd..Elsa Lancheste
Sidney Redlitch...........Ernie Kovacs
Merle Kittridge..............Janice Rule
Directed by Richard Quine
Music by George Duning
Running Time: 106 minutes
Written by Daniel Taradash
Based on the play by John Van Druten