“Harvey”

Posted on 15. Aug, 2009 by admin in Blog, Classic Movies, Column

Continuing Column: A 13 Year Old’s Perspective on Classic Movies-Article #6
by Emily Hodges

Harvey (1950)

Harvey is a very funny movie.  It may be black and white but it is very enjoyable. My favorite part was in the beginning when Mr. Dowell was introducing Harvey to everybody.  They were thinking, “Now that’s a crazy person”. Nobody could see Harvey except Mr. Dowell, Elwood P. Dowell.

Harvey Movie

Harvey, the invisible, 6’3” tall, rabbit, is a very smart pooka.  This means: A creature from Celtic mythology which is a spirit in animal form that is always very large.  A pooka appears hear and there, now and then, and to this one and that one; fond of crack heads and pot heads and “How are you Mr. Wilson”.  Of course Harvey put that in there to spook Mr. Wilson who was reading that in a dictionary.  He was looking around and was like “What the heck!” How spooky!

People looked at Elwood like he was crazy, too!!  My favorite (visible) character was Vita, Elwood’s sister.  She was a crazy old lady and is also the kind of person who makes a fuss out of everything.  You can (now) see how she would react to Elwood coming to live with them.  She got so crazy that she tried, and failed, to lock Elwood up at the loony bin.  Instead, which is also funny, she gets locked up and Elwood is freed.  It’s a very funny play.  I loved it a lot.

In one of the scenes, you can see what Harvey looks like.  Elwood has a picture of Harvey and himself painted and that he puts in front of Vita’s pictures, above the mantle (picture above).

The play/movie (whatever you want to call it) was a little long, but all in all, it was a pretty good one.  I didn’t know what a pooka was until I watched it.  It’s interesting that they put one in a movie.  It was sweet and Elwood was nice to everyone.  He stopped and said hi to strangers in the street. What I thought was pretty weird, considering that Elwood does have some kind of intelligence in the wacky head of his, was that I think that he either forgot the fact that nobody else can see Harvey and will think that Elwood is crazy or he just didn’t want to know or something.

From what I have read about pookas is that they can also come in the form of horses, goblins, and dogs.  They can also speak and are spirits in the form of animals, so they are not always just animals.  They just take the form of them.

Emily Hodges

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