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?

ThatMOVIENut Instead of LIFE magazine and a journey dealing with life reaffirmation, the forties 'Mitty' instead has our hero as a daydreaming author of cheap pulp stories, and engaged to a vapid airhead with a snappy dog and overbearing mother. One day however, Mitty's life gets turned on its head when the mysterious blonde from his daydreams actually enters his life, protecting the secrets of an elderly collector from a villainous mastermind known as The Boot. Misunderstandings, hijinks and Mitty's bumbling-turned-heroics ensue.For all its earnesty and warmth, the '47 'Mitty' ends up feeling bloated. This is in part due to an overuse of the daydream gimmick, here all taking cues from the character's pulpy background; sailing on stormy seas, ww2 ace, Southern Gentleman Gambler and Western showdown among others. Each one is colourful, and the actors all embrace the archetypes, but after the third vignette, the daydreams loses any story function and feels more like a showcase for Danny Kaye's comedy talents, and the pacing is irreparably crippled. What should be as straightforward as a fish out of water/unlikely hero story for 'Mitty' keeps getting interrupted by these daydreams, despite the rest of the narrative having enough momentum, and it gets really grating. If you are one of those people who thought the new 'Mitty' had padding/filler, the older version will have you ripping your hair out.A shame, as we have buckets of amusing gags within and around these bits, as well as charismatic performances spearheaded by the sadly forgotten Kaye who is able to go from goof to suave smoothly, and even has decent singing chops. Heck, we even get the always magnificent Karloff as a secondary villain, a killer doctor, and he's just as much fun as you'd think he would be in this role. What's more, because of the choice of vignettes and occupation, this film also serves as a fun little spin/capsule on 40s popular culture, and even little jabs at it, especially with the character of Mitty's boss, the Publisher.In the end, the '47 'Mitty' is by no means a bad or even horribly dated film, but honestly, I have to give the point to the newer version. Yes, it may have had some sap in it, but it flowed much more tightly and smoothly as a narrative, and the daydreams served a story purpose as opposed to being a cheap gimmick like here. If you want to get into more fantastical 40s comedies, I recommend Kaye's other film, 'Wonder Man' (1945) instead.

Hot 888 Mama . . . or soccer games with Himalayan Sherpas in this early adaptation of the James Thurber short story, THE SECRET LIFE OF WALTER MITTY (1947). Apparently, Mitty is in the eye of the beholder, and the producers of this flick wanted a cross between Harpo Marx and Gene Wilder's "Willie Wonka," as anachronistic as that may seem. Danny Kaye pushed their buttons, so we're treated to tongue-twisters, slapstick stumbling jags, and patter songs in lieu of big-budget travelogues, volcanic eruptions, and mountain skate boarding. Where the 2013 Ben Stiller remake relies on stunning visuals, while occasionally being plagued by Non Sequitar groaners (such as the ludicrous BENJAMIN BUTTON spoof), this original from the 1940s has a plot featuring four actual "plotters" (though the ultimate goal of these knock-out drug-wielding kidnappers is much murkier than that of the similar gang in Hitchcock's NORTH BY NORTHWEST). Seeing Frankenstein's monster playing a shrink will be a hoot for many, though Boris Karloff is cast here as a fake psychiatrist (who tosses Mitty out of a high-rise office window!). Don't limit yourself to one Walter; as they say, "the more the Mittier."

zardoz-13 Talk about a problem with source fidelity! "Monkey Business" director Norman Z. McLeod and scenarists Ken Englund of "No, No, Nanette" and Everett Freeman of "George Washington Slept Here" kept one scene from James Thurbers' short story "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty" and jettisoned everything else. Indeed, Mitty is still a day dreamer in the story as he is in the film. The filmmakers replicated one scene from the story and changed everything else. The Walter Mitty that comedian Danny Kaye incarnates is a mild-mannered bachelor who lets his overbearing mother bully him. In the story, Mitty is married, but he is only dating a girl in the movie. The scene that was lifted from the short story is the surgery scene when Mitty repairs a piece of hospital equipment so doctors can operate on their patient. Since the story is pretty short, the filmmakers had to flesh things out and have they ever more fleshed things out. Mitty works for a firm that publishes crime and romance magazines. In the short story, we never learn what business that Mitty is in as a career. The premise of "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty" is that the Dutch are trying to recover famous artwork and Mitty has a notebook about these artifacts. Mitty meets the heroine, Rosalind van Hoorn (Virginia Mayo of "White Heat"), and she is trying to locate with the help of another man a number of valuable paintings that disappeared during World War II. Everybody is searching for a black notebook and nobody believes Mitty when he tries to convince others that he is up to his ears in trouble with some ruthless characters. Danny Kaye is perfectly cast as the eponymous character. Fay Bainter plays is obnoxiously overwrought mother who constantly reprimands him. Mitty day dreams about surviving a storm at sea in the opening moments. Naturally, our bumbling hero thwarts the villains, "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty" is a hilarious comedy.