2freensel
I saw this movie before reading any reviews, and I thought it was very funny. I was very surprised to see the overwhelmingly negative reviews this film received from critics.
Livestonth
I am only giving this movie a 1 for the great cast, though I can't imagine what any of them were thinking. This movie was horrible
Freeman
This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.
sol-
Viewed for a second time, the Danny Kaye version of 'The Secret Life of Walter Mitty' is not quite as fresh and original, but it still stands up as one of the more offbeat films of its year - and far superior to the Ben Stiller version. Bright-eyed Kaye is well cast as a perpetual daydreamer cartoonist who uses fantasy to escape the mundane nature of his everyday life. The first third of the film is spent acquainting us with the flaccid border between fantasy and reality in his mind before the plot sharply veers towards absurdism as Kaye encounters Virginia Mayo's damsel in distress and finds his life thrown into disarray with a more elaborate conspiracy than anything he had ever dreamed of - just like one of his comic book heroes' lives. The Technicolor sets and costumes (especially the hat show) are great. Further delights include a brief but brilliantly menacing Boris Karloff performance and a thoughtful audio design linked in with the fantasy/reality divide. Not only are the "tapocketa, tapocketa" sounds a great running gag, but many background noises in the film are also played at louder than usual volumes during the reality-based scenes. Less delightful are the musical numbers that Kaye is stuck with singing. The tunes are decent but jar with the narrative flow and the first one goes on for way too long as Kaye imitates a former lecturer. Never to mind, the film's celebration of the human imagination is nicely tantamount to a celebration of the power of cinema itself; after all, how far removed is writing cartoons from writing inventive motion pictures?
l_rawjalaurence
Watching the Danny Kaye version after having watched the Ben Stiller remake is a fascinating experience. The modern remake has definite virtues - notably Stiller's little-boy-lost performance in a sophisticated world of New York advertising, as well as the subtext offering an elegy to LIFE magazine, now doomed to appear on the internet only. On the other hand Norman Z. Mcleod's Technicolor version of the Thurber story contains one of Danny Kaye's best performances on film. He was nothing short of a genius - a brilliant slapstick comedian, with an apparently limitless range of facial expressions, with a natural instinct for delivering comic songs full of verbal pyrotechnics. Structurally speaking, the film has a story of sorts, but is basically a star vehicle for Kaye to show off his talents, playing a distressed sea- captain, an English flying ace (complete with cut-glass RP accent), a brilliant card-sharper (complete with cheroot) and a cowboy storming into a studio-set bound western town. His wife Sylvia Fine provides the music and lyrics for two specialty tunes; in one of them he plays a mid- European professor impersonating most of the instruments of the orchestra. With all this verbal and visual wizardry going on, it's hard to concentrate on the plot; but it doesn't really matter, as Kaye is such an endearing performer that he can quite easily win his way into the audience's affections, especially when he plays direct to camera as if performing in the live theater. The film contains one or two good supporting performances, notably from Virginia Mayo as the love-interest playing several roles in Kaye/Mitty's fantastic dreams, and Boris Karloff as a crooked psychiatrist trying to push Kaye/Mitty out of the window of an upper-floor skyscraper, and then putting him under psychological influence in an attempt to extract vital information out of him. But basically the film belongs to Kaye, a superb star vehicle for a fantastically talented actor and performer, who was as much at home in front of a live audience as he was in front of a movie camera.
utgard14
Walter Mitty (Danny Kaye) is a meek man who escapes from his life through daydreams. In these daydreams he's always a hero or a big success. In his real life he's a pushover who lets his mother dictate his love life and lets his boss steal his ideas. One day he meets a mysterious woman (Virginia Mayo) who looks exactly like his love interest in his daydreams. She gets Mitty mixed up in a plot involving a little black book and some bad guys trying to get it.Entertaining Danny Kaye vehicle that goes on too long but is still lots of fun. The Technicolor here is gorgeous. It really just pops out at you. Virginia Mayo looks especially lovely. Kaye plays to his strengths quite well. Ann Rutherford and Fay Bainter are wonderful. Boris Karloff has a great (but small) role as one of the baddies. Not Danny Kaye's best film but a very good one.
bkoganbing
James Thurber's whimsical day dreamer Walter Mitty was a perfect character for Danny Kaye to apply his many talents with. Make note however this is not film based on Thurber's short story, The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty, but the character is used to fashion a plot whereby this day dream believer gets into a real life adventure. And gets the girl one only dreams about.Poor henpecked Danny Kaye as Mitty works as a proofreader for publisher Thurston Hall who specializes in putting out pulp fiction works of adventure and romance. He's put upon by everyone, from his mother Fay Bainter to his girlfriend Ann Rutherford, her mother Florence Bates, his best 'friend' Gordon Jones and not the least by his boss Hall. His escape is in daydreaming and it's in these imaginary sequences that Kaye's real talents of singing and mimicry are given full range. During one of those sequences while at a fashion show Kaye does one of his most famous routines Anatole Of Paris.While on a train Kaye meets the beautiful girl of his dreams Virginia Mayo who is carrying some documents vital to her native Dutch government. And she's being pursued by the kind of international criminals that appear in James Bond or Austin Powers. Konstantin Shayne is the master criminal known only as 'the Boot' and he's assisted in his nefarious schemes by Boris Karloff. After he meets them poor Danny spends the rest of the film trying to help or rescue Virginia Mayo and convince the others in his life that he's in a real situation. The rest of his circle put his ravings down to an overactive imagination and he's even referred to a psychiatrist who turns out to be Boris Karloff. I'm not sure who was playing straight for who in the psychiatrist sequence, but it's funny nonetheless.It's not James Thurber. Thurber's story would be almost impossible to create accurately for the screen since it's all in his protagonist's mind. But as a character for Danny Kaye, Walter Mitty is a natural.
