In a stand-out performance, Kim Novak has a bewitching good time toying with Jimmy Stewart’s clueless mortal.
Among the jazz bars and beatnik scene of 1960s Greenwich Village resides a thriving community of witches and warlocks. Gillian Holroyd (Kim Novak), one of the most powerful among them, lives behind the shop she runs selling African artefacts, while her aimless sorcerer brother (Jack Lemmon, The Apartment) plays bongos at a local club and her trickster aunt (played by a delightful Elsa Lanchester, Bride of Frankenstein) keeps tabs on her from the apartment above. When mild-mannered publisher Shep Henderson (James Stewart) moves into the building, she decides on an impulse to playfully seduce him with the help of her familiar, a cat named Pyewacket. What she doesn’t quite bargain for is the very real emotion that ensues.
Re-teaming with her Vertigo co-star Stewart, Novak gives one of the most natural and lived-in performances of her career. Her innate charm and vulnerability are a perfect fit for Gillian’s seemingly elusive witch, and she brings genuine emotional gravitas, through which you can really feel her struggle with letting her guard down. Beneath its charm and whimsy, Bell, Book and Candle offers a sly meditation on conformity, desire and the vulnerability required to truly connect with another person.
Content: Melbourne International Film Festival
Bell, Book and Candle [is probably] the greatest Christmas-set supernatural rom-com ever made … It casts a powerful spell, one that enchants new viewers across generations whenever — like magic! — it is conjured up for viewing.
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