Tell me if you’ve heard this one: Jimmy Stewart and Kim Novak star as romantic leads in a 1958 Technicolor film. This, of course, describes Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo, an all-time masterpiece, but it also applies to a fluffy little delight of a witch-themed romcom that has some beatnik flavor to it, Bell, Book and Candle. Stewart landed this role as the other half of the trade that sent Novak to Paramount for Vertigo. (Essentially all documentation I can find on the film eschews the Oxford comma in the title. The film’s own opening title card goes even further and skips the commas entirely.)
The mood on this one is great, shot in Greenwich Village with great scenes set in clubs and on the streets. Legendary cinematographer James Wong Howe gives it groovy, green-heavy lighting; he said he had a blast experimenting with tinted lights and filters on this one. It also benefits from an extremely charming supporting cast: Jack Lemmon playing a gay-coded warlock, Ernie Kovacs as a paranormal-obsessed writer, and, most importantly, a remarkable cat named Pyewacket. Novak’s Gillian is about as bewitching as any woman has ever been on film (this and I Married a Witch make a great double feature of contrasting but magnificent examples of eye-popping beauty and screen command with Lake and Novak). Funny that it’s ever-great Stewart who is the closest thing to a wet blanket among the bunch; he’s a bit too old and stodgy for the part, and it’s no surprise this is generally considered his final turn as a romantic lead.
It’s a lightweight affair, and its ending feels a bit like a selling out of the spirit of witchy, feminist freedom that Gillian displays throughout the film, but it’s a good time nonetheless.
