Date Seen: 5/14/17
Score: 4/5
DIRECTOR: George Cukor
PRODUCER: Joseph L. Mankiewicz
STUDIO: MGM
SCREENPLAY: Donald Ogden Stewart & Waldo Salt
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Joseph Ruttenberg
The Philadelphia Story is like, easily one of the most famous and celebrated romantic comedies of all time, and certainly of the Golden Age of Hollywood. It was made during that phase of Hollywood rom-coms in which the favorite thing to do was set up a situation in which two bickering divorcées fight comically, flirt with other people, get drunk, and realize they still love each other, leaving the other people they got into this mess on their own. So, basically The Parent Trap but without kids and with like 70% more domestic abuse.
I really wanted to like this film because I'm super into that genre, and I expected it to be a lot like the indelible 1937 film The Awful Truth, which basically perfects the divorce-comedy genre. I mean, if Cary Grant could make one amazing he could make the other as good, right? Well, let's just say that Katharine Hepburn is no Irene Dunne. God, she's annoying. She's one of those actresses who I really want to like because she's so renowned and celebrated and iconic... but her voice is crazy annoying, and she basically does nothing except complain and wear pretty clothes the entire movie, somehow getting not one, but three men to fall in love with her.
I love Cary Grant. He can do no wrong (except for Hitchcock's Notorious, in which he's disturbing as hell and not very likable at all). I have mixed feelings about Jimmy Stewart, again because of Hitchcock's creepy grip on his character. Neither Grant nor Stewart is particularly great in this film, and they don't really seem to like Hepburn's Tracy very much at all. That Stewart won his only Oscar for this film, and not one of his more impressive acting feats (I'm thinking of his genuinely lovely, heartwarming, funny performance in It's A Wonderful Life, or even his disturbing and sometimes frightening performance in Vertigo), is questionable. All he does in this film is walk around, sniff unhappily, make fun of the bourgeoise, and ramble on in his Jimmy Stewart voice. I'm not entirely sure he's acting in this movie to be honest.
The only characters who really nail it are Ruth Hussey's Liz and Virginia Weidler's Dinah, who are both hilarious and sharp. It makes me pretty sad that Virginia Weidler retired from acting so young, because it's hard to watch her performance without feeling genuinely like she could have been a huge star. That being said, it's probably best that she escaped the fates of other MGM child actors, namely Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney.
I'm definitely here for any movie that includes a prolonged drinking scene. It's only a shame that Cary Grant's Dexter didn't get drunk in the sequence in which basically every other character in the film did, because he is, hands down, the master of being drunk onscreen (I'm thinking of North By Northwest). Jimmy Stewart does a pretty funny job bearing the brunt of the drunkenness, though, and I found myself laughing out loud only during this part of the film.
The ending is questionable. I knew from the beginning that there was no way in hell that a studio led by Louis B. Mayer would make the socially unacceptable choice of having a divorced(!) woman(!!) remarry someone as unpleasant and unhappy as her. I mean, this isn't Warner Brothers!! No, it was pretty obvious from the start that Hepburn was going to end up back where she started, with her drunk, abusive, but also somehow hot and lovable ex, Cary Grant. The end of this movie is ridiculous, but you do kind of want Tracy and Dexter to hook up again. It's just nowhere near as satisfying or funny as it is in The Awful Truth.
Moral of the story: If you're a big Hepburn fan, it's obvious that you're familiar with her performance in this film- after all, this was the movie that dragged her out of the "Box Office Poison" blacklist. If you're able to handle her, you should be happy with her performance here. If you like Jimmy Stewart and are looking for a good performance, just watch one of his Capra collaborations. If you like Cary Grant, skip this one and watch The Awful Truth.
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