How sad is this?

Absolutely Fantastic

Clever, believable, and super fun to watch. It totally has replay value.

The movie really just wants to entertain people.

"The Secret Life of Walter Mitty" is an enjoyable old film. However, it does have a big strike against it. The studio really made this a Danny Kaye film instead of basing it closely on the James Thurber story. Had it stuck closer and featured less over- acting by Kaye, the film would have greater lasting power today. Instead, it occasionally is cringe-inducing and also has way too much in the way of intrigue.Danny Kaye plays the lead. At times, he's wonderful as well as charming and likable--and at other times he does much more of his Borscht Belt shtick instead of remaining true to the character. So, while I liked Mitty's little regressions into the fantasy world in the story, here they often are just excuses to have Kaye do his act--such as the weird linguistic exercises that folks apparently thought were funny back in the day. I seriously doubt it would go over very well today. If they'd just stuck to him having charming little day dreams like the Thurber ones, it sure would have worked better. Including a plot about Nazis and stolen Dutch art as well as the stand-up routines just tended to derail the otherwise excellent story. Worth seeing but far from Kaye's best work and unfortunately it really did little with the wonderful original source material.

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.

Watching the Danny Kaye version after having watched the Ben Stiller remake is a fascinating experience. The modern remake has definite virtues - notably Stiller's little-boy-lost performance in a sophisticated world of New York advertising, as well as the subtext offering an elegy to LIFE magazine, now doomed to appear on the internet only. On the other hand Norman Z. Mcleod's Technicolor version of the Thurber story contains one of Danny Kaye's best performances on film. He was nothing short of a genius - a brilliant slapstick comedian, with an apparently limitless range of facial expressions, with a natural instinct for delivering comic songs full of verbal pyrotechnics. Structurally speaking, the film has a story of sorts, but is basically a star vehicle for Kaye to show off his talents, playing a distressed sea- captain, an English flying ace (complete with cut-glass RP accent), a brilliant card-sharper (complete with cheroot) and a cowboy storming into a studio-set bound western town. His wife Sylvia Fine provides the music and lyrics for two specialty tunes; in one of them he plays a mid- European professor impersonating most of the instruments of the orchestra. With all this verbal and visual wizardry going on, it's hard to concentrate on the plot; but it doesn't really matter, as Kaye is such an endearing performer that he can quite easily win his way into the audience's affections, especially when he plays direct to camera as if performing in the live theater. The film contains one or two good supporting performances, notably from Virginia Mayo as the love-interest playing several roles in Kaye/Mitty's fantastic dreams, and Boris Karloff as a crooked psychiatrist trying to push Kaye/Mitty out of the window of an upper-floor skyscraper, and then putting him under psychological influence in an attempt to extract vital information out of him. But basically the film belongs to Kaye, a superb star vehicle for a fantastically talented actor and performer, who was as much at home in front of a live audience as he was in front of a movie camera.

In New York, the clumsy Walter Mitty (Danny Kaye) is the publisher of pulp fiction at the Pierce Publishing house owned by Bruce Pierce (Thurston Hall). He lives with his overprotective and abusive mother (Fay Bainter) and neither his fiancée Gertrude Griswold (Ann Rutherford) and her mother (Florence Bates) nor his best friend Tubby Wadsworth (Gordon Jones) respects him. Walter is an escapist and daydreams into a world of fantasy many times along the day. When Walter is commuting, he stumbles in the train with the gorgeous Rosalind van Hoorn (Virginia Mayo) that uses Walter to escape from her pursuer. Walter unintentionally gets involved with a dangerous ring of spies that are seeking a black book with notes about a hidden treasure."The Secret Life of Walter Mitty" (1947) is a hilarious comedy about a clumsy daydreamer that gets into a dangerous ring of spies. Last Saturday I watched the annoying "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty" (2013) with Ben Stiller and I decided to seek the original 1947 movie that is better and better, with many gags. Danny Kaye is very funny performing the clumsy and coward Walter Mitty. Forget the 2013 remake and prefer to see the original 1947 comedy. My vote is seven.Title (Brazil): Not Available