Groundhog Day - Ryan Gilbey

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Résumé :
It is becoming clearer and clearer that Groundhog Day (1993), directed by Harold Ramis, is one of the masterpieces of 1990s Hollywood cinema. One of the first films to use a science-fiction premise as the basis for romantic comedy, it tells the story of a splenetic TV weatherman, Phil Connors (Bill Murray at his disreputable best), who finds himself repeating indefinitely one drab day in the milk-and-cookies town of Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. At first glance it seems like a feel-good parable in the tradition of Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life (1943). But on closer inspection it is a deeply ambivalent fable, with strong echoes of Samuel Beckett: before he finds redemption Phil must plumb the depths of suicidal despair - and even after he has survived this, the film offers no guarantees that he will live happily ever after. Ryan Gilbey begins his account of Groundhog Day with the long and unlucky gestation of the script by Danny Rubin (who was interviewed specially for this book) which formed the basis of the finished film. Gilbey celebrates the inspired casting of Murray, alongside Andie MacDowell and less well-known actors such as Stephen Tobolowsky (who plays the reptilian sa...

Biographie:
Ryan Gilbey is a writer and critic based in London. He was named the Independent/Sight and Sound Young Film Journalist of the Year in 1993 at the age of 22, won a Press Gazette award for his reviews at the New Statesman, where he was film critic from 2006 until 2023, and has written for the Guardian since 2002. He is the author of It Don't Worry Me: Nashville, Jaws, Star Wars and Beyond (2003) and It Used to Be Witches: Under the Spell of Queer Cinema (2025)....

Sommaire:

Acknowledgments
1. A Funny Film
2. In the Loop
3. 1 February
4. Groundhog Days
5. Days without End
6. 3 February
Notes
Credits