I first saw Harvey being a child and I didn't like it. Now I've seen it again...and I don't like it either. As when I was a child the main reason is I do not find Elwood character nor Harvey really nice: maybe it is because of the menacing look of the rabbit appearing in the picture Elwood (James Stewart) hangs on the wall but Harvey has always seemed to me a manipulative and selfish creature more than a good friend trying to make Elwood life happier. And Elwood doesn't appear to me a happy character but a very sad one who, at one point of his life and due to some facts we are not allowed to know, decides (in the film it is firmly stated that it was a voluntary decision) to quit reality to live in an alternative world of his own, although he is not happy in it, only less sad. Maybe the play describes characters in a different way and show us a kind and full of bondage Elwood who only wants to live in a better, more human world with people helping each other and taking interest in other people. This is a nice and beautiful idea and I'd love the film would have shown it! but what this film shows is not this at all: Elwood new world is a world where apparently everybody is kind and friendly, a world where apparently peoples' best feelings emerge to reveal better personalities. But that's what this new world is about: apparency. The supposed kind and friendly people are not really so, as Elwood himself reveals when speaking to Dr. Sanderson (Charles Drake). He says he meet lots of people in the bar, friendly people but that they do not show again. And the supposed people best feelings are not seen in Elwood himself towards his own family either: whilst he is more than charming to people he meets at the bar or in the mental institution, he does not have the same consideration towards his poor sister, who lives in the edge of a nervous breakdown due to his way of doing, not only by Elwood's rabbit hallucination but also having to stand with unknown people Elwood constantly invites to their home or making impossible for her to have a social life. Furthermore, allegedly absent-minded Elwood is not really so, as although he is apparently "always doing what sister Veta (Josephine Hull) says" he is in fact getting other people do what he (and alter ego Harvey) wants. So what is presented to us here is a man running away from his life who ends up living in a self-made rabbit cage. I don't see it is a happy comedy at all, although it has its funny moments (i.e. when Veta asks her daughter to find out who is the stranger in the bathroom after speaking with Elwood). And by quitting reality in search of a better life and a better mankind understanding he does not mind or realize hurting his own family in the process. In the end he does not seem to reach that happy status he is searching for at all, but a less painful state of mind. In fact author instruct us to just believe in Harvey's great beneficials instead of letting us to know it by first-hand by sparing us all the dialogue scene between Elwood, Harvey and Dr. Chumley (Cecil Kellaway) at the bar. Maybe Mrs. Chase didn't know how to make such chat work, but this takes off a lot of credibility to Her pretended premise. Furthermore, it is difficult to understand why Dr. Chumley runs away from Harvey once he has discovered rabbit's extraordinary beneficial power: shouldn't he be happy to have Harvey around? Why else he asks Elwood to leave Harvey with him in the end? *Spoiler* And as a final punch, even in the end of the film family is not allowed to get free from Harvey (wouldn't it have been a much better ending and according to the extending bondage the play is supposed to transmitt that Harvey finally would stay with Dr. Chumley and allowed other people to enjoy him? Or, in case Elwood didn't want to leave Harvey, that both of them decided to stay in the mental institution where both Dr. Chumley and Elwood -and maybe other patients- could enjoy Harvey too and where Veta and her daughter could visit them without suffering Harvey? Or that thanks to his new friendship with nurse Kelly (Peggy Dow) and Dr. Sanderson, etc. he feels motivated to go back to reality applying the new way of doing Harvey has taught him to real life instead of surrender?) and a sad vision of the future is presented: Elwood will keep on eluding eality although this does not bring him the desired happiness he searches for and deserves an unhappy panorama to his sister and niece. I must mention apart the superb acting work of Josephine Hull, who deservedly won an Oscar for her role.
Review of Harvey
