Any film that starts and ends with the words “they lived happily ever after…or did they?” is bound to be something quite remarkable, especially one produced over eighty years ago. It’s hardly a surprise that the mind behind this simple but effective manipulation of a common trope is Preston Sturges, a filmmaker whose entire existence seemingly focused on taking conventions of the film industry and turning them on their heads in an effort to redefine the art of storytelling, which he clearly saw as being weighed down by traditions that may be comforting to most viewers, but utterly boredom-inducing for those who have grown weary of the same kinds of screen romances. There has yet to be a Sturges film that I have encountered that I did not find inventive, hilarious and absolutely genius – and The Palm Beach Story is not about to be the outlier. Functioning as one of Sturges’ many attempts to reconfigure the romantic comedy under his own artistic ambitions – which are certainly far more refined than many of his contemporaries, considering he was one of the earliest examples of an auteur, known for directing his own scripts rather than working in one position or the other – the film is a hilarious and irreverent voyage into the latter days of a seemingly loveless marriage that is on the precipice of failure, with the only way to salvage their relationship as a whole is to simply dismiss it entirely. Sturges’ genius knows very little bounds, and his work is absolutely impeccably-craft, and while it may not be considered his masterpiece, The Palm Beach Story is yet another tremendous entry into one of the greatest filmmaking careers in the history of Hollywood.

Something that viewers new to Sturges’ work learn almost immediately upon being immersed in his world is that he makes films with a mean streak to them. The Palm Beach Story is undeniably a romantic comedy, but its one that finds its humour at the expense of its character’s happiness – the film begins with an idyllic marriage, and within only a few minutes, the word “divorce” is spoken a few dozen times, indicating that the impetus behind this film was about as far from romantic as one could expect, instead being one of the rare instances of a truly cynical comedy that aimed to deconstruct the entire genre as a whole. There’s a coldness to these characters and the situations they find themselves in, so much that we start to wonder whether The Palm Beach Story could be considered one of the first notable comedies about a broken relationship since the outset of The Motion Picture Production Code (Sturges always seemed to be grappling with studios and the draconian standards of Will H. Hays in terms of the material he infuses into his films – each one pushes boundaries in ways that give them such a distinctly progressive tone, whether it be the tame but clear eroticism of The Lady Eve, the forthright cynicism of Unfaithfully Yours, or the progressive race-relations of Sullivan’s Travels) – but it just proves that the director was not one who was all that interested in adhering to conventions. Navigating along the edges of the screwball comedy, adherent enough to its traditions to be considered an entry into the genre, but only marginally as a result of its more bewildering approach to the story, the film bounds through its story and its theoretical underpinnings, putting us on a cross-genre journey, much in the same way that these characters are making their way down to merry Florida to get a new start, only to be confronted with the realities of the past.

In both his directorial and solo writing efforts, Sturges worked with a number of prominent performers, often having a penchant for the leading ladies of the era. Looking at the roster of actors that appeared in front of his camera, delivering his witty, well-constructed dialogue, we find an impressive collection of some of the greatest names in the history of the Golden Age of Hollywood. Claudette Colbert stands head and shoulders above nearly all of them, not only in this film, but throughout her career – gamin but feisty, and capable of capturing both soaring romance and irreverent humour, she’s one of the greatest actresses of all time. Yet, she is somehow still underestimated from a contemporary perspective, with her contributions as a powerhouse of the industry seemingly being disregarded in favour of some of her more bombastic colleagues. The Palm Beach Story has one of her very best performances. Considering some of her best work was produced during the Pre-Code era (such as It Happened One Night and The Smiling Lieutenant, the latter having been directed by another notable auteur of the Golden Age, the remarkable Ernst Lubitsch, with whom she would work again in the future), it’s not surprising that she was able to evoke that same spirit of rebellion when working with Sturges. Her performance in this film is absolutely terrific – she moves with such immense grace, which almost betrays the fact that her character is quite a rascal in her own right, and whenever we’re tempted to look towards some of the other actors, such as Joel McCrea (reuniting with Sturges after his career-best performance in Sullivan’s Travels), or Mary Astor or Rudy Vallée, another regular actor in the director’s roster of actors, our gaze is automatically redirected towards Colbert, whose performance is just an absolute revelation in every way, which seems a peculiar sentiment for someone who has always been considered one of the most consistently great performers of this era, a sentiment she was subjected to for over a decade before this film.

There comes a point where we have to wonder whether or not The Palm Beach Story will actually have a happy ending, or if it will be one of the rare instances of a comedy with a truly bleak ending, which was seen as nearly taboo at the time. A screen romance had to find a way to tie up all loose ends and produce a resolution that would leave audiences delighted as they exited the theatre. One has to wonder whether Sturges agreed with this, since not only does this film have a happy ending that seems forced, it defies the laws of logic, with the absurdity of the resolution being that the various lovers involved in this elaborate love triangle discover their respective paramours both have twin siblings that are supposedly identical in both look and disposition, being one of the most insanely outrageous endings to any comedy in history. Yet, it works so well, and it makes sense in the context of the film. The entire film seems to be moving along with some kind of elegant irrationality, the peculiar approach to establishing a scenario that seems realistic and conventional, and then having it divert sharply in the other direction, taking even the most seasoned viewers by surprise. It’s a wildly inventive work, which may not be apparent at a cursory glance, since it seems like any ordinary romantic comedy (including all the predicable moments of tension). It only makes the film that surrounds the story all the more compelling, since after the first few moments of unhinged hilarity that are clearly motivated less by tradition and more by the director’s own absurd sense of humour, we’re fully committed to the world of the film, and the many peculiar ideas that lie beneath the surface, which makes viewing The Palm Beach Story such an invigorating and meaningful experience.

The Palm Beach Story is a delight – witty, irreverent and outrageous from beginning to end, it’s not difficult to understand why it is considered a gem of the Golden Age of Hollywood. Its humour is fresh and invigorating, and much like the director’s other work, it never feels dated, which is unfortunately one of the unavoidable consequences of revisiting classic-era screwball comedies. Whether an intentional joke, or just a throwaway comment, the film provokes laughter like few others from this era. This only makes the fact that Sturges once again infused the film with the kind of spirited candour that informed all of his work all the more impressive, since lurking below the surface of this offbeat comedy is a genuinely challenging story of a relationship that has fallen apart. We should not be distracted by the off-the-wall humour when it comes to dissecting the film and seeing that there is a clear message here – happy endings are not always reliable in real life, and sometimes one has to simply walk away from a situation, acknowledging that while they may not regret the choices they made in the past, there is very little shame in starting over. It would take the industry many decades to revisit such ideas, since the ideal story always found a way to show love as the ultimate conclusion, but as we see throughout The Palm Beach Story, there is always value in pulling apart the fabric of conventions and seeking some deeper meaning, which only makes the film even more of a delight, since the manner in which the director investigates these ideas is through the most unconventional and tremendously entertaining comedy imaginable, which only serves to make this an even more remarkable work of romantic storytelling – after all, not everything needs to have the happy ending we would expect.