Bringing Up Baby Literary Elements

Bringing Up Baby Literary Elements

Director

Howard Hawks

Leading Actors/Actresses

Cary Grant as David Huxley, Katharine Hepburn as Susan Vance

Supporting Actors/Actresses

Virginia Walker as Alice Swallow

Genre

comedy

Language

English

Awards

88th place on the American Film Institute 100 greatest American films of all time

Date of Release

16th of February 1938

Producer

Cliff Reid

Setting and Context

Connecticut USA, first half of the 20th century

Narrator and Point of View

Third-person limited point of view

Tone and Mood

Chaotic, fast-paced

Protagonist and Antagonist

Protagonist: David Huxley, Antagonist: an appearance of the wild leopard creates an antagonizing situation with high stakes

Major Conflict

David's fate gets constantly chaotically intertwined with the scatterbrained Susan, who is also a niece of Elizabeth Random, a rich woman who is supposed to make a large donation to David's work.

Climax

All the characters end up in prison with a series of misunderstandings where they discover that there is a wild leopard on the loose, a leopard that Susan went to look after thinking it's her tame leopard Baby.

Foreshadowing

"I have a feeling something horrible is gonna happen."
-David telling Susan just before chaos with Baby ensues.

Understatement

"You've just had a bad day, that's all."-Susan
"That's a masterpiece of understatement."-David

Innovations in Filming or Lighting or Camera Techniques

Both of the leopards appearing in the movie were played by a trained leopard named Nissa, with constant supervision of the trainer.
The dog George was an already famous acting dog called Skippy which appeared in various other movies.

Allusions

"I can't give you anything but love"-a popular American jazz songs from the 1920s

Paradox

"I did talk to him, but I didn't talk to him."

Parallelism

"I've got my head. I've lost my leopard."-Susan

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