Cinema
Bell, Book and Candle
Richard Quine · 1958
Synopsis
New York, on Christmas Eve. In Greenwich Village, Gillian Holroyd runs a primitive art gallery and lives with Pyewacket, a Siamese cat who serves as her familiar: she is a witch, like her aunt Queenie and her brother Nicky. She learns that her new upstairs neighbour, the publisher Shep Henderson, is engaged to Merle Kittridge, a university rival who once denounced her to the dean. Shortly before this wedding, through her cat, she casts a love spell on Shep.
Context
John Van Druten's play opened on 14 November 1950 at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre and ran for 233 performances. James Stewart and Kim Novak made up the couple in an Alfred Hitchcock film the same year. The creator of a television series launched in 1964, about a witch married to an ordinary man, acknowledged having been inspired by this film and by a comedy of 1942; the series ran for eight seasons.
Who it is for
A colour comedy of a little over an hour and forty minutes, in which magic works through a cat, a telephone and a storm set off in the middle of a room.
Prizes and reception
Two Oscar nominations in 1959, for art direction and costume design, and one Golden Globe nomination for best comedy.
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