User Reviews

It's a gentle, easy-going 1950s comedy. Kim Novak belongs to a coven of witches in Manhattan. She puts a spell on neighbor Jimmy Stewart out of boredom but eventually falls in love with him, losing her powers. See, witches are permitted to have "hot blood" but not love. Elsa Lanchester is Novak's aunt, also a witch. Jack Lemmon is her brother, ditto. Hermione Gingold is the chief witch, and Ernie Kovacks is Sidney Redlich, an author who specializes in writing about witches.

I described it as a 1950s comedy because it could hardly be mistaken for anything else. Everything is so smooth and polished, from the set decoration, through wardrobe and plot, to the performances and direction. Take the character of Ernie Kovacks. He's referred to as "a drunk and a nut." And here's how the movie demonstrates these traits. He asks for a second drink, and, though he always wears a jacket and tie like the other gentlemen, his hair is a bit long and tousled. That's a strictly 1950s version of a drunk and a nut. Nothing is out of place; everything is tidy and free of dust. The soles of Jimmy Stewart's shoes are barely scuffed.

And the Zodiac Club, where the witches hang out. It's called "a low dive." Yet it's a clean, dark place with polite waiters, a quintet of musicians, neatly dressed clientèle, and potted plants against bare brick walls. That is not my idea or yours of a "low dive" -- not even for Greenwich Village in 1958. My idea of a dive in Greenwich Village is Julius's or The White Horse Tavern or The San Remo or The Swing Rendezvous, a now defunct lesbian hangout. The Zodiac Club is a high dive compared to these.

The kookiness we always hear about is muted by today's standards. I mean, Kim Novak is odd because she runs around her apartment in her bare feet. And she wears a lot of black clothes like the Beatniks of the period did.

But never mind all that. It's an enjoyable romantic comedy. Kim Novak is effective as Gillian, who runs a primitive art shop for the uptrodden. She has a strange beauty, bulky and ethereal at the same time. She glides rather than walks, a wispy presence. Her eyebrows seem drawn with a set of plastic French curves. And Jimmy Stewart is quite good as the bewildered and bewitched victim. In the 1930s he usually played in light roles. In the postwar years and for much of the 1950s he was the tortured protagonist, but here he puts his early experience in comedy to good use. Who could resist laughing when Hermione Gingold forces him to wear a shawl and drink a hideous concoction of putrid fluid in order to cure him of Novak's spell? It's good to see him as a stooge instead of the angry and indignant man of principle he was in danger of becoming. Richard Quine directs the movie quietly, without fireworks or special effects, and does some interesting things that the play couldn't have had. Note the scene in which Novak casts the spell over Stewart, when the Siamese cat's face and ears seem to merge with Novak's startling eyes.

Ernie Kovacks in the 1950s was a well-known television personality. There was never anything quite like The Ernie Kovacks Show before -- or after. It brings the word "surrealism" to mind. He could stage five minutes worth of wordless and indescribable tricks in an unpopulated room with only Bartok's Concerto for Orchestra as background. And he did an unimpeachable sketch using the character of Percy Dovetonsils, an effete poet. The movie's end credits kind of skip over The Condoli Brothers but that's a little cavalier because these two guys -- Pete and Conte -- were virtuoso trumpeters with independent careers in jazz ensembles. Conte was later a member of Doc Severison's band on Johnny Carson's Late Show. You can see Conte play a few screwy solo notes in the "No Hay Banda" performance in David Lynch's "Mulholland Drive."

The third act kind of bogs down a little and becomes more "romantic" than "comedy". But it's never dull. The whole film rolls along as neatly as Van Druten's play and the kids will probably get a kick out of it too.

There's a creepy nastiness to this movie's portrayal of the denizens of Greenwich Village. The snobbish non-hip Janice Rule is the Queen of Mean, but so were the warlocks and witches at the Zodiac. The Village atmosphere is done well by director Richard Quine, with the narrow streets in the snow. But the Stewart-Novac 'chemistry' is shrill, Lemmon comes off mean and the interesting Ernie Kovacs is wasted somehow as the buffoonish drunk. I did like the Flat Iron Building and the falling hat. And there should be a book written about Janice Rule and her genius at playing feminine evil.

As a huge fan of both Novak and Stewart, I was amused by this light-hearted romantic comedy. Novak was brilliant in her role as the darkly attractive bohemian witch.

----Spoiler Alert----

However, take a look at the stunning anti-feminist angle of this movie... Witches lose their powers if they fall in love, leaving Novak's character at the end powerless, but *of course* she is glad to trade independence and her family connections for domestic bliss with Stewart. Watch how her wardrobe changes, moving from uninhibited (and comfortable) to standard 1950's Donna Reed fare at the end, complete with pantyhose and high-heels around the house. It's sad, really. Apparently, this movie believes that women should give up all their power and individual Self gladly in order to have love and a home of their own.

Still amusing, but don't take it to heart.

This movie takes an idea that might have had potential-a group of witches in Manhattan daring to get too involved with ordinary humans-and makes a rather incoherent and confusing story. It is billed as a comedy but has hardly any laughs, despite all the big-time stars including Ernie Kovacs.

A family of witches in an apartment building meet a new tenant, a major book publisher who is set to marry a woman whom one of the witches is an old enemy of-and said witch makes the man fall in love with her as a way to spite the other woman. Of course there are complications with that idea, one being that witches are not supposed to have romances with ordinary humans. Another is that this witch's brother is a childish prank-player who decides to get involved with an author to get a book published revealing the secrets of the Manhattan witch community-putting them into danger.

Based on a stage play of the same name, the movie might have been effective if done right, but somebody must have put a hex on this production. Jimmy Stewart is too old to play the part of the book publisher who is the type to marry and love in haste, all the other performers lack chemistry, and the movie fails to develop the background of the witches' community, such as why they were even in Manhattan to begin with, or what sort of lives they normally have. That might have been interesting in itself.

This scenario might have worked, but they developed it too poorly and made it into a bad rom-com.

Gillian Holroyd (Kim Novak) is a witch. Secretly, she's attracted to her quite normal neighbor Shep Henderson (James Stewart). She casts a spell on Shep that forces him to dump his fiancé and fall for her. Things are going along quite nicely until Gillian discovers she really cares for this mortal man. She decides to tell him her secret. But how will Shep react when he finds out that he was "tricked" into falling in love with Gillian?

As far as light-hearted 1950s comedies go, Bell Book and Candle is good, but nothing spectacular. It's an enjoyable enough watch and should appeal to almost anyone who sits down with it. Just don't go into the movie expecting the greatest thing since sliced bread. The movie's cute, funny at times, and touching in the end. Kim Novak and James Stewart do their best and have some real chemistry. Novak (as others have pointed out) looks quite incredible in an understated sort of way. The supporting cast with Jack Lemmon, Hermione Gingold, and Elsa Lanchester is often laugh-out-loud funny and steals a lot of the spotlight from Novak and Stewart. The biggest problem I see is that Bell Book and Candle can't quite decide what kind of movie it wants to be. Is it a screwball comedy? Is it a romantic comedy? Is it a supernatural comedy? Had director Richard Quine stuck with just one approach, the movie might have been even better and more memorable.