Bringing Up Baby.
In “Leopards in Connecticut” chapter Cavell explains Bringing Up Baby from two interesting viewpoints: he sees David as “extricating himself from Miss Swallow,” and describes Connecticut episode as night when David and Susan become “childhood sweethearts, inventing for themselves a shared, lost past, to which they can wish to remain faithful.”
First, let’s take a look at Cary Grant’s protagonist -- the professor who is about to have a big day: he is receiving a missing bone to accomplish the work of his life and getting married Miss Swallow, a women, who is in her order, in love with his work. The very first scene makes clear that these two have completely different understanding of marriage and its purpose; here we also understand that David, in spite the fact that he loves the pale of old bones as much as Miss Swallow does, also has romantic interest that was quickly suppressed by his future wife. Surprisingly, the conflict wasn’t heavily dramatized later in movie.
Second, Hepburn’s character, on the other side, is another kind of extreme, opposite to Miss Swallow. She is wild, eccentric and less rational. Seems like she isn’t completely David’s type, but clearly she offers him something that Miss Swallow miss and represents something new and intriguing, something that David think lacks himself; not necessarily better or worse, but only different (at least, I felt that it was a point).
Consciously or unconsciously he makes his choice and blowing off his own wedding, he doesn’t try hard in evening to come back to New York, or resist Susan at the very end even if he complains about her through the whole movie. He is clearly interested in Susan, who is more likely change his life (especially by ruining his work at the museum), and not so much in his marriage with Miss Swallow.
Cavell calls it “interpretation of the genre of remarriage” (PH, 127), the Connecticut night is the night when they create their shared past and develop emotional bond that leads to some sort of “marriage” at the end, when David awkwardly shouts at Susan “I’ve never had a better time!”
The final scene might be interpreted in many ways (what we did in class), but I feel that this movie has a good enough ending that could had been spoiled by sequel. Questioning their potential future seems to be pointless – some people just meant to be together for no reason and that’s the beauty of it.
The film explains us that not only people who have so much in common have a potential for future together, but rather sometimes one might not expect to find a “missing part” of oneself, when in fact it was always sitting there and waiting for certain awakening (that is what I think Susan have done to David). We also get to watch dry scientist finding joy of life, even if he has to go through the night of leopard chasing and childhood throwback.
