It's Hollywood, but it's also New York, along with the dazed awareness that New York was a jungle of greed and indifference, but absolutely the most modernist place we had. Hollywood was still a small country town in the thirties, and it adored (and deplored) New York. After all, a scavenger hunt in which a forgotten man is one of the requirements? Is this heartlessness-or is it satire? Yes, of course, it's funny, and mildly moralistic in its way-Godfrey does do his best to educate this brimmingly dysfunctional family. But as written by Morrie Ryskind and directed by Gregory La Cava (still underrated), it is the speed, the wit, and the insolence that are so rich-and the indifference extends to that dreary problem-solving mentality which in time becalmed storytelling in film and television. As in the world of Preston Sturges, being crazy answers everything.