The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek

The “miracle” of The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek is that audiences in 1943 bought Preston Sturges’s film as a proposition. The story makes no sense and Sturges knew it didn’t. Hence the framing device added to distance the “facts” of what we see on screen from their telling. The film begins with a state governor being told a wildly implausible story in a telephone call from an excited journalist, and ends back in the governor’s office, where the final tawdry details are being received. Sturges obviously intends that we understand we’re getting the facts at one remove and that there’s been a bit of journalist licence used in the story’s reporting. Here’s the … Read more