Bell, Book and Candle

John Van Druten's stage comedy Bell Book and Candle starred Rex Harrison and Lilli Palmer on Broadway. The 1958 filmed version stars James Stewart and Kim Novak, fresh from their successful teaming in Hitchcock's Vertigo. Novak plays Gillian Holroyd, a genuine, bonafide witch. Falling in love with ...more

The attitudes in this comic fantasy are very much those of a 1950s establishment mindset: Kim Novak's character loses her supernatural powers when she falls in love, and she doesn't mind losing her wiles if it means marriage and a placid domestic life with beau James Stewart. Nonetheless, the film has excellent production values, charismatic performances, and sprightly dialogue. It represented a change of pace for Novak and Stewart after their previous teaming, earlier that year, in the ...more