Bringing Up Baby – Criterion Blu-ray Unboxing

One of Howard Hawks’ most beloved films and an undisputed comedy classic, Bringing Up Baby is a delightful 1930s romp that sees superstars Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn share the screen with a leopard in this chaotically comic film that holds up remarkably well today as one of the funniest and most absurd mainstream comedy films ever made. Bringing Up Baby harks back to a bygone era, the Golden Age of screwball comedy, and is a charming reminder of simpler times.

The film has made its UK Blu-ray debut as part of The Criterion Collection, and this is absolutely cause for film fans to rejoice.

Synopsis

Screwball sparks fly when Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn let loose in one of the fastest and funniest films ever made—a high-wire act of invention that took American screen comedy to new heights of absurdity. Hoping to procure a million-dollar endowment from a wealthy society matron for his museum, a hapless palaeontologist (Grant) finds himself entangled with a dizzy heiress (Hepburn) as the manic misadventures pile up—a missing dinosaur bone, a leopard on the loose, and plenty of gender-bending mayhem among them. Bringing Up Baby’s sophisticated dialogue, spontaneous performances, and giddy innuendo come together in a whirlwind of comic chaos captured with lightning-in-a-bottle brio by director Howard Hawks.

Special Features 

• New, restored 4K digital transfer, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
• Audio commentary from 2005 featuring filmmaker Peter Bogdanovich
• New video essay on actor Cary Grant by author Scott Eyman
• New interview about cinematographer Russell Metty with cinematographer John Bailey
• New interview with film scholar Craig Barron on special-effects pioneer Linwood Dunn
• New selected-scene commentary about costume designer Howard Greer featuring costume historian Shelly Foote
• Howard Hawks: A Hell of a Good Life, a 1977 documentary by Hans-Christoph Blumenberg featuring the director’s last filmed interview
• Audio interview from 1969 with Grant
• Audio excerpts from a 1972 conversation between Hawks and Bogdanovich
• Trailer
• English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
• PLUS: An essay by critic Sheila O’Malley and the 1937 short story by Hagar Wilde on which the film is based

BRINGING UP BABY is available now from The Criterion Collection