Bell, Book and Candle

Richard Quine - 1958 - USA

• Bell, Book & Candle is the surreal, mainstream rom-com parallel film to Hitchcock's Vertigo, released earlier the same year and also pairing James Stewart and Kim Novak.  In both, Stewart is a straight 'everyman' entranced by the ethereal Novak.  The 'other woman' in both is a painter too; Barbara Bel Geddes in Vertigo and Janice Rule in Bell, Book & Candle.

• The rare kind of film where the milieu inflames the imagination and remains in the memory far more than the plot; the awesome African/Oceanic art gallery, the underground Zodiac jazz club, the benevolent cabal of latter-day witches, the comic supporting cast of Elsa Lanchester, Ernie Kovacs, Hermione Gingold & Jack Lemmon.  A case where the total is less than the sum of its parts.

• An early Hollywood representation of beatniks reinforcing the affectionate and harmless cliche of black-clad bongo-playing hipsters convening in smoky jazz clubs.

• It was a big hit in 1958, unlike the commercially weak and then-unappreciated Vertigo. 

• The casting came about because Columbia lent Novak to Paramount for Vertigo and in return Paramount lent Stewart to Columbia for Bell, Book & Candle, but otherwise there was no intended connection between the two films.