Line #12 Film/TheSecretLifeOfWalterMitty1947


1	[[quoteright:305:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/walter_mitty_1947_film_poster.jpg]]
2
3	''The Secret Life of Walter Mitty'' is a 1947 American comedy-fantasy film directed by Norman Z. [=McLeod=] and starring Creator/DannyKaye, inspired by Creator/JamesThurber's [[Literature/TheSecretLifeOfWalterMitty short story]] about an inconsequential and put-upon man who escapes into daydreams of heroic adventure.
4
5	Unlike in the original story, the film's Mitty gets to live out a real heroic adventure when he gets tangled in a search for a treasure misplaced during World War II.
6
7	The story was also adapted to film [[Film/TheSecretLifeOfWalterMitty in 2013, starring Ben Stiller]].
8
9	----
10
11	!!This film provides examples of:
12
13	* AdaptationExpansion: As was probably inevitable when trying to make a two-hour film out of a story a few pages long about a man going shopping.
14	* ArtisticLicenseMilitary: In one of the fantasy sequences, set on a British airbase, Mitty addresses a Royal Air Force officer as "Colonel"; there is no such rank in the RAF, where the equivalent rank is "Group Captain". Incidentally, the officer is wearing the rank insignia of an Air Vice-Marshall, equivalent to a Lieutenant-General in the Army, while Mitty, supposedly a Squadron-Leader, equivalent to an Army Captain, is dressed as a Group Captain.
15	** Possibly justified in that as an American Walter might not be familiar with RAF ranks and his imagination assumes that they are the same as those in the USAF.
16	* CampGay: "Anatole of Paris", the fashion designer in one of Mitty's daydreams.
17	* {{Catchphrase}}: The onomatopoeic "ta-pocketa," which threads its way through many of Mitty's daydreams (e.g. as the sound of a machine in an operating theater).
18	* GladIThoughtOfIt: Walter Mitty's boss repeatedly claims all of Mitty's ideas as something he'd already been planning.
19	* HeartInTheWrongPlace: Obliquely referenced in which one of Walter's magazine stories features a vampire that got staked early in the serial, but returns because the villagers pierced his left lung, not his heart.
20	* IndulgentFantasySegue: A not-insignificant part of the film is made up of these, with Mitty slipping into various Fantasy segues ranging from murders and high adventure to a musical number where he plays a Camp Gay fashion designer.
21	* LostHimInACardGame: In the riverboat gambling fantasy, Gaylord Mitty's opponent tries to stake his fiancee, whom he knows Mitty is in love with, in a card game after losing the plantation deed he'd cheated the girl's father out of. Gaylord is unable to hold a lady to such a bargain, so the man proposes that he'll "[[LoserLeavesTown go North]]" if he loses.
22	* MrImagination: Walter Mitty.
23	* MisterMuffykins: Queenie, who sits in a high chair to eat, wears a bib, and barks whenever the main character moves.
24	* OnlyAFleshWound: Mitty as a grizzled sea captain has "only a broken arm" while piloting a ship through a terrible storm.
25	* SouthernGentleman: Gaylord Mitty in the riverboat gambler sequence.

Context Film / TheSecretLifeOfWalterMitty1947