# 192 Harvey (1950)

Harvey is a movie about an extremely nice middle-aged man, Elwood P. Dowd, whose best friend happens to be a pooka. Now, what is a pooka? It's a "benign but mischievous creature from Celtic mythology" who is especially fond of social outcasts. In this story it appears as a 6 foot tall rabbit. Elwood drives his sister and his niece crazy by trying to introduce his friend to everybody around them, which makes people avoid their whole family.

At first I really had no idea what the movie was going to be like, for a while I even thought that it might be something like One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. I kept getting more and more captivated by the story, and I have to say that I really liked the comic side of the film, this comedy of errors, where one mistake leads to another, making things more and more complicated. The second part of the film is more of a drama, and I felt like the moral was a little too obvious, but still I liked how Harvey brought up the issue of prejudice, and people being unable to accept what's different from themselves.

The supporting character's acting was too theatrical, but Stewart did an amazing job, and the film's success, in my opinion, is entirely on his shoulders. The character himself is very memorable too, I enjoyed watching how he touched the lives of others, it's him who made the movie so good-natured. Besides, there are some great witty lines, my favorite is in the "favorite quote" section below. Harvery leaves a good aftertaste, and it's definitely worth watching.

Interesting fact: Although James Stewart is 6'4", he refers to Harvey as being 6'3 1/2" tall in the film and looks up at him during the entire film. That's because this is Harvey's height in the original play by Mary Chase. In a 1990 interview, Stewart said that he had decided that for the film, Harvey was going to be 6'8'', so that he could indeed look up at him. At the suggestion of James Stewart, the director changed many shots to make them wider so that "Harvey" would be in the frame.

Favorite quote: Years ago my mother used to say to me, she'd say, "In this world, Elwood, you must be" - she always called me Elwood - "In this world, Elwood, you must be oh so smart or oh so pleasant." Well, for years I was smart. I recommend pleasant. You may quote me.