901 The Philadelphia Story

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domino harvey
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901 The Philadelphia Story

#1 Post by domino harvey » Wed Aug 16, 2017 4:34 pm

The Philadelphia Story

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With this furiously witty comedy of manners, Katharine Hepburn revitalized her career and cemented her status as the era's most iconic leading lady—thanks in great part to her own shrewd orchestrations. While starring in the Philip Barry stage play The Philadelphia Story, Hepburn snapped up the screen rights, handpicking her friend George Cukor to direct. The intoxicating screenplay by Donald Ogden Stewart pits the formidable Philadelphia socialite Tracy Lord (Hepburn, at her most luminous) against various romantic foils, chief among them her charismatic ex-husband (Cary Grant), who disrupts her imminent marriage by paying her family estate a visit, accompanied by a tabloid reporter on assignment to cover the wedding of the year (James Stewart, in his only Academy Award–winning performance). A fast-talking screwball comedy as well as a tale of regrets and reconciliation, this convergence of golden-age talent is one of the greatest American films of all time.

SPECIAL FEATURES

• New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
• Audio commentary from 2005 featuring film scholar Jeanine Basinger
• New introduction to actor Katharine Hepburn's role in the development of the film by documentarians David Heeley and Joan Kramer
In Search of Tracy Lord, a new documentary about the origin of the character and her social milieu
• Two full episodes of The Dick Cavett Show from 1973, featuring rare interviews with Hepburn, plus an excerpt of a 1978 interview from that show with director George Cukor
Lux Radio Theatre adaptation of the film from 1943, featuring an introduction by filmmaker Cecil B. DeMille
• Restoration demonstration
• PLUS: An essay by critic Farran Smith Nehme

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Re: 901 The Philadelphia Story

#2 Post by Werewolf by Night » Wed Aug 16, 2017 5:06 pm

Looks like a nice release, but don't get rid of your Warner Bros. 2-disc DVD edition. The documentaries Katharine Hepburn: All About Me - A Self-Portrait and The Men Who Made the Movies: George Cukor are both great and not carried over (neither are they available on any other DVD or BD release).

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Ribs
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Re: 901 The Philadelphia Story

#3 Post by Ribs » Wed Aug 16, 2017 5:20 pm

TCM does show the Hepburn doc like five times a year, cos I invariably watch the whole thing to completion when I see it's on.

(I'm a bit surprised it's not here, considering the Hepburn doc about Tracy made it on to Woman of the Year; maybe it'll be on Bringing Up Baby?)

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Re: 901 The Philadelphia Story

#4 Post by felipe » Thu Aug 17, 2017 8:34 am

I love the film and was anxious for this release, but hate to say that it seems that Criterion's features are way inferior to Warner's 2-disc edition...

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Re: 901 The Philadelphia Story

#5 Post by Werewolf by Night » Thu Aug 17, 2017 12:48 pm

But those Dick Cavett interviews are great, and the discussion of Hepburn's role in getting this film made when she was persona non grata in Hollywood sounds interesting.

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domino harvey
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Re: 901 The Philadelphia Story

#6 Post by domino harvey » Thu Aug 17, 2017 1:30 pm

RE: Dropped features, Criterion only includes one of the radio adaptations on the Warners set as well

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901 The Philadelphia Story

#7 Post by movielocke » Thu Aug 24, 2017 11:45 pm

My wife and I watched this last year and I was struck throughout at just how poor the two disc DVD felt relevant to contemporary expectations. And I remember being amazed at that DVD when it first came out relative to my VHS recording off TCM in SLP and the tcm print probably being from a shitty 16mm tv print.

But regarding the film we had quite the amazing conversation about all the myriad ways it deals with sex, marriage, women as property, and so on.

In particular, we talked about the way jimmy Stewart, even if he is good in bed, is rejected because he believes sex makes her his possession, while Cary grant ultimately succeeds because he's rejected that former attitude and accepts an independent Katherine Hepburn. And that the film was so good about making Stewart appealing and then deciding he wasn't appealing and that was remarkable and really satisfying succinct way of exploring a casual sex relationship compactly.

So I'm excited this is getting another release, the script is incredibly rich in how it deals with sexual politics, social roles and the central spoiler that a woman learning she can enjoy sex can be a liberating experience and that she can even be so liberated as to affirmatively choose marriage rather than being forced into it or forced to reject it on principle.

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Re: 901 The Philadelphia Story

#8 Post by dwk » Tue Oct 10, 2017 11:21 pm


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Minkin
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Re: 901 The Philadelphia Story

#9 Post by Minkin » Wed Nov 08, 2017 9:37 am

The Atanasov Story

Was this the vault fire that destroyed this film's negative?

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Roger Ryan
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Re: 901 The Philadelphia Story

#10 Post by Roger Ryan » Wed Nov 08, 2017 11:50 am

Minkin wrote: ...Was this the vault fire that destroyed this film's negative?
It seems more likely that this fire at the George Eastman House the same year was the culprit since 327 original camera negatives for MGM features, shorts and cartoons were lost.

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Mr Sausage
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The Philadelphia Story (George Cukor, 1940)

#11 Post by Mr Sausage » Mon Feb 01, 2021 12:48 pm

DISCUSSION ENDS MONDAY, February 15th

Members have a two week period in which to discuss the film before it's moved to its dedicated thread in The Criterion Collection subforum. Please read the Rules and Procedures.

This thread is not spoiler free. This is a discussion thread; you should expect plot points of the individual films under discussion to be discussed openly. See: spoiler rules.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

I encourage members to submit questions, either those designed to elicit discussion and point out interesting things to keep an eye on, or just something you want answered. This will be extremely helpful in getting discussion started. Starting is always the hardest part, all the more so if it's unguided. Questions can be submitted to me via PM.

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Re: The Philadelphia Story (George Cukor, 1940)

#12 Post by Drucker » Mon Feb 08, 2021 11:49 pm

This one took a moment to click for me but I think I loved it. Kind of expecting a screwball, I'm honestly a bit hit and miss on Cukor. I loved Syliva Scarlett, Born Yesterday wasn't quite for me, and have Bill of Divorcement on tap. I found this film surprisingly slow-paced, which I found a bit unique towards its approach if its truly a screwball comedy. But the sarcasm frequently had me laughing out loud, and Stewart's transformation as the film progresses from dour hard-edged guy to delightful dolt was charming to watch. I also loved the little hat tips to the silent era that opens the film, and Cary Grant's demeanor throughout. There's a ton of scenes where he seems to be lifting his entire persona fom Groucho Marx and I liked that quite a bit as well.

It's a great film, and the ending really takes it over the top. My girlfriend had been hyping it up to me for a few days so I was a bit let down, but understanding that this is really the film that Hepburn corralled to re-launch her career was helpful and lends an extra bit of enjoyment to the way it ends.

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Re: The Philadelphia Story (George Cukor, 1940)

#13 Post by senseabove » Tue Feb 09, 2021 1:26 am

Oh no—the only reason to watch Bill of Divorcement is an established and resilient devotion to Cukor, Hepburn, or Barrymore. Neither performance is notable for any positive reasons, and it's one of the worst from a director who made a whole lot of bad movies—and I say that as one of his more vocal defenders on the board these days, who thinks he made a lot more great movies than most folks. If you want next steps, I'd strongly suggest Gaslight, Holiday, and A Star is Born (with knowledge that Cukor had nothing to do with the "Born in a Trunk" interlude).

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Re: The Philadelphia Story (George Cukor, 1940)

#14 Post by Michael Kerpan » Tue Feb 09, 2021 10:54 am

This is a rare film that I enjoyed the first time I watched, but liked less and less with every subsequent viewing. At around the 4th or 5th revisitation, I decided to say "sayonara". I guess the fairly deep sexism of the script (as I perceived it) occupied more and more of my attention as time went on.

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barbarella satyricon
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Re: The Philadelphia Story (George Cukor, 1940)

#15 Post by barbarella satyricon » Tue Feb 09, 2021 1:36 pm

Although I was never an active poster on the old imdb message boards, I thought it was a shame when what I then thought was a uniquely useful and comprehensive forum for film discussion got shuttered for good.

Returning more recently to some of the archived threads has somewhat disabused me of that rose-tinted view of the old place, as it does seem more clear now that a large number of the discussions there were just people venting or declaiming about movie plots and characters, often like they were talking about people actually known to them or about situations happening in real life.

That said, when an old warhorse like this one occasionally turns up again for discussion, I flash on an imdb thread such as this one, titled “Liz is my idol”, and do see how this kind of direct, personal reaction and appraisal did once enhance my appreciation of this film, whose central characters registered to me more as vague (Grant’s Dex) or overly arch (Hepburn’s Tracy) dramatic abstractions than as readily recognizable human personalities.

Ruth Hussey’s Liz has the line near the end that always gets me:
SpoilerShow
“Don’t get too conventional all at once, will you? There’ll be a reaction.”
For me, it’s just a perfect bit of dialogue, and with James Stewart playing off of it with a chastened sheepishness that he had coming to him over the whole preceding newsman-on-a-story-then-a-romance rigmarole, it’s good enough to squeak this one over the line of good, not bad, old classic.

Dex and Tracy, still can’t be sure about those two, but Liz and Mike just makes sense? I think it’s actually their union that brings solidity and a measure of sweetness to whatever “comedy of remarriage” that does come together, an ending which would probably have come off a lot more curdled if it was just another Grant and Hepburn show.

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Re: The Philadelphia Story (George Cukor, 1940)

#16 Post by bottlesofsmoke » Tue Feb 09, 2021 2:42 pm

This is a movie that works better for me in individual scenes and performances, rather than as a whole. Ultimately, I think it suffers mightily from excessively placing blame on Tracy, essentially saying, among other things, that if she had been a better wife / daughter, the men in her life wouldn’t have done the things they did, that’s it’s all her fault her father left her mother and her own marriage broke up.

Of course, this “humbling” of Hepburn is the point, a calculated move to change her reputation with audiences and even critics after the critical and box office failure of her mid-to-late thirties period, humbling herself before the patriarchy in order to be more appealing. But her being in on the game doesn’t make it any less off-putting for the movie.

In moments not directly pertaining to the above, you have exactly what you’d expect from a well-written and directed romantic comedy with a great cast. (I do wonder what the film would have been like with Hepburn’s first choice of Clark Gable and Spencer Tracy would have been like, or the Broadway cast of Joseph Cotten and Van Heflin, for that matter.)

Grant stands out by injecting a bit of a screwball performance into a more traditional romantic comedy, but then he gets the show-stealing role, while Stewart has to play the ultimately more difficult, straighter role. I know Stewart gets bashed for winning the Oscar, but he is very good despite clearly stepping out of his comfort zone at times.

That said, I don’t think he has the same depth here as some of his other pre-war performances. It’s pretty remarkable he was in this, The Shop Around the Corner, and The Mortal Storm (movies I like immensely more than this) all in the same year.

Similarly, Ruth Hussey, as Barbarella Satyricon says, is equally key as a counterpoint to the more fanciful Hepburn. Stewart and Hussey ground the story in the same way that Spencer Tracy does in other Hepburn movies, in a way that Grant really doesn’t, which partially explains why the other Grant/Hepburn movies were flops with audiences at the time. That said, I much prefer Holiday and Bringing Up Baby to this movie, which is as interesting as a symbol of Hepburn’s change in approach to her career, as well as orchestrating her own comeback, as it is as a movie itself.

(To really appreciate how good the lead actors are in this, just watch what the cast of High Society does with the same material!)

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Re: The Philadelphia Story (George Cukor, 1940)

#17 Post by Roscoe » Tue Feb 09, 2021 4:22 pm

The film's insistence on telling me how wonderful glorious marvelous its heroine is eventually sours me on it and her. She's a nice enough rich kid, I guess, but Stewart's big speech about her ("A magnificence that comes out of your eyes, in your voice, in the way you stand there, in the way you walk. You're lit from within, Tracy. You've got fires banked down in you, hearth-fires and holocausts. You're made out of flesh and blood. That's the blank, unholy surprise of it. You're the golden girl, Tracy. Full of life and warmth and delight" oh come the fuck on) just leaves me wondering what he's talking about. And for all the prattling about how Class Doesn't Mean Anything Really It Doesn't there's no denying that the closest thing the film has to a villain is the lower-class climber George Kitteridge, who is shown to be such an obvious stuffed shirt phony that it's impossible to believe that Tracy would give him five minutes, much less promise him the rest of her life.

And it may just be me, but everytime I see this film I'm more annoyed by the score, which makes just barely enough changes to Rhapsody In Blue to be able to avoid giving Gershwin credit or money.

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Re: The Philadelphia Story (George Cukor, 1940)

#18 Post by senseabove » Wed Feb 10, 2021 3:22 am

While I'm working out thoughts and responses after a rewatch tonight: has the shooting script/screenplay of this really never been published anywhere?

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Re: The Philadelphia Story (George Cukor, 1940)

#19 Post by Red Screamer » Thu Feb 11, 2021 10:07 pm

I watched this for the first time last night. It's hard not to compare it to Holiday, since it reshuffles many elements of Barry's earlier script. Whereas that film is a perfect string of grace notes, this one moves in fits and starts and doesn't really cohere as a whole. For example, the moments showing a softer side of Hepburn's father in Holiday work beautifully, giving us a sense of why she holds out hope for him and the rest of her family. But in The Philadelphia Story, the father-daughter reconciliation scenes feel unearned, since he's been nothing but a one-dimensional bully the rest of the time. The earlier film's dark side enhances its emotional stakes, while the undercurrents of violence in this film, which Cukor strangely treats with weight, poke holes in its comedy, making it a somewhat bitter and depressing experience for me. It was weird, then, to read a bunch of reviews afterward calling the film "effervescent" and "sparkling" and so on.

The most obvious difference in the two films' approach is political. Philadelphia's apologia for the rich and insistence on compliance as a way of life is miles away from Holiday's class satire and sober defense of idealism. The earlier film is a drama of personal philosophy, the latter, one of politeness. Roscoe's right that its oft-repeated "messages," as it were, are a roadblock for the movie. And in more ways than one, since Grant is self-righteous and largely without jokes until after he's done lecturing Hepburn. Stewart is definitely the MVP of the main trio, but it helps that his character has the most range. A writer spotting his book on someone else's shelf and, as a result, exclaiming, "You have unexpected depth!" is perfect. Ruth Hussey's banter with him is also a highlight and I agree with Barbarella above that she's surprising and heartbreaking in the final scene, particularly in her close-ups, which made me wish the movie hadn't sidelined her so early on.

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Re: The Philadelphia Story (George Cukor, 1940)

#20 Post by senseabove » Thu Feb 11, 2021 10:49 pm

It's amusing that bottleofsmoke and Roscoe have opposing reactions to Tracy: bottleofsmoke thinks the movie "suffers mightily from excessively placing blame on Tracy" while Roscoe tires of it "telling me how wonderful glorious marvelous its heroine is." Meanwhile, I think the well-rounded humanity of Tracy, and the rest of the leads, really, is the movie's strength. Firstly, because it underlines our own expectations by showing them evolving from shorthand caricatures—reckless and alcoholic playboy, overly-principled snobbish artist, spoiled high-minded rich girl; and secondly, because all of the lead characters have strengths and flaws beyond those caricatures that are clearly laid out for us by other characters, who each perceive them differently from their different relationships: father, sister, mother, ex-wife, fiancé, unrequited lover. Not only those traits, positive or negative, but the ways that others view them differently are put into delightful interplay as the movie progresses.

Dext's development is the most careful and considered because he has, in fact, already changed, so what changes in his stead is our awareness of him. Rather than Kittredge, Dext is the "villain" of the film until the last third. He's selfish, cadish, unruly, disruptive, and, of course, alcholic. Those expectations play beautifully to Grant's strengths as an actor as well as his on-screen persona. His deadpan cheek reads as aloof, distant, passively manipulative—he just has to sit there and wait for Tracy to throw herself at him (which is why the twist of her drunkenly falling for Stewart is such an unexpected surprise); he's a weasel intruding on the wedding preparations, until Stewart's drunken intrusion in turn reveals that, from the start, he's only been playing the role his own actions from the distant past have cast him in, right down to the blackmail. Then, Grant's cheek becomes, in retrospect, a graceful, earnest acquiescence: he knows he can't simply ask people to trust him again, and nobody he cares about will trust him unless they are forced to reckon with their distrust, and he can't be caught in even half a lie or he'll lose any good will he's gained. It's a long anti-con. He can't explain why he's there, because no one will believe him. So when Tracy catches him and he explains the Spy situation to her and she says to him, "And you, you're really enjoying it," his retort is that beautiful, flat "Am I, Red," with its halo of a question mark. Which is to say, "I won't try to deny it, because you already think I am" but also, "I hope you notice: I've arranged it to protect you and yours, too."

Which, to echo barbarella satyricon, is to say that Dexter's corollary is Liz, and the two of them together really are the heroes of the movie: they're the clear-eyed, sober observers, biding their time, waiting until the person they love is ready to receive their love: "Liz, why don't you marry him?" "You really want to know? He's still got a lot to learn... I don't wanna get in his way for a while. Okay?" She's sidelined so early in the film because she's the fully developed ideal of patience and understanding. She's waiting for everyone else, and us, to catch up. Even Dext is still learning his own limitations: "Then you don't know women." "That's possible." "Then you're a fool." "That's quite possible."

Both are, thanks to their own profound, historic mistakes, very aware that they have limitations, and that others have limitations, and that they may or may not be able to grow past them: "I knew a plain Joe Smith once... Worst rat I ever met," whom we come to find out was Liz's first husband, mentioned to Connor's shock—"You never asked!"—when Tracy "interviews" them, and whose specter is pointedly raised by Liz correcting Tracy's "Maid of Honor?" to "Matron." It's most succinctly phrased, though, in Dext's humorous, pitch-perfect correction of Liz pleading her understanding to George with "But a man expects his wife to behave herself, naturally": "To behave herself naturally!"

And that last bit, I think, is also a succinct argument against michael kerpan's dismissal: the movie pivots around people learning to live their ideals—whatever those may be—more practically, and to grant both themselves and others leniency with regard to their shortfalls. (This also underlies, and makes sense of, Tracy's comments on and interactions with her father.) Which is to say Tracy's faults—as well as Connor's, as well as Liz's and Dext's in the past—do not depend on her inability to meet her or anyone else's standards of womanhood, but on her inability to meet her own standards, and her expectation that everyone else should meet hers for them as well. Meanwhile, everything Tracy is most faulted for, Connor is also faulted for, if to a lesser degree; all five characters involved in the romance are on a kind of sliding scale, from Liz to George. The movie is gender essentialist, sure (cf. Tracy's father's speeches especially), like very nearly every movie that doesn't explicitly engage gender essentialism, so gender assumptions factor into everybody's standards for themselves and others, but the movie's final development is a willingness, and plea, to let everyone have ample leeway with those standards anyway.

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Michael Kerpan
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Re: The Philadelphia Story (George Cukor, 1940)

#21 Post by Michael Kerpan » Thu Feb 11, 2021 11:25 pm

senseabove -- I didn't "dismiss" the movie -- I came to dislike it. I kept giving it chances, hoping to recapture some of the enjoyment I had on my first watching. And it just kept pushing me further away with each re-visit.

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Re: The Philadelphia Story (George Cukor, 1940)

#22 Post by senseabove » Fri Feb 12, 2021 12:14 am

Okay, sure, I'll concede the minor semantic point that "dismissing" is not the same as "saying sayonara" after five increasingly disillusioned viewings.

I'd be more interested in what strikes you as sexist about it, if you can recall—especially to any more notably objectionable degree than your average post-Code fare—since that's the only reason you initially supposed for your growing dislike, and the movie strikes me as significantly less sexist than typical for 1940 for reasons I describe. It's perfectly fine to dislike or even dismiss the movie for no reason whatsoever, and to say so, but I was arguing for a movie I love against your essentially drive-by charge of sexism.

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Re: The Philadelphia Story (George Cukor, 1940)

#23 Post by barbarella satyricon » Fri Feb 12, 2021 4:38 am

bottlesofsmoke wrote:
Tue Feb 09, 2021 2:42 pm
That said, I much prefer Holiday and Bringing Up Baby to this movie, which is as interesting as a symbol of Hepburn’s change in approach to her career, as well as orchestrating her own comeback, as it is as a movie itself.
I came to this one pretty late, long after I’d seen both Holiday and Bringing Up Baby, and even after it eventually got on my radar, I don’t know what it was — the whiff of canned theater, the divided reviews I’d read — but I only checked it out as the last of the Hepburn/Grant films to see. (Sylvia Scarlett, which I’m eliding here as the case of a real outlier, a genuine film maudit, I got to some time later, last of all, and kind of liked..?)

And in line with what bottlesofsmoke says (though not in specific relation to Hepburn’s career arc), I value this one mainly as one part in conjunction with the other two. If I was being that one really verbose person in a film seminar, I might try to force a Freudian theory lens over that grouping of three, with the Hawks as the id comedy, Holiday the dramedy-romance of ego identity, and this one a kind of super-ego character study, pitched a little too high.

All that may or may not stand up to scrutiny, but it does triangulate nicely in my mind as a cycle of films on the ways we might negotiate our way through the civilized world, process, reprocess, then play out our parts within it.

The longer post by senseabove highlights and affirms those thematic aspects for me, even elevates my estimation of the film as I now recall some of the nuances of the screenplay as senseabove delineates it.

But even with that, there are still some other matters of content and tone that do make parts of the film come off unmistakably sour and unpleasant. Though I can’t quote the specifics here, wouldn’t there be a general consensus, at least among viewers in more recent history, that some of the dialogue directed at Tracy, by her father, by Dexter, really doesn’t just fly by like a bit of old-fashioned chauvinism, but rather smacks of the kind of programmatic undermining of character and selfhood that looks and tastes exactly like a shoved spoonful of the patriarchal, misogynistic, sexist bad old days?

I’m being a little facetious with that overloaded description, but that is the background to what I feel is, in agreement with Red Screamer, an unearned reconciliation between Tracy and her father — a not unthinkable plot element that is unfortunately executed in a way that feels like a vaguely hideous ribbon, slapped on in a rush, on an otherwise okay-looking wedding gift slash happy ending.

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Re: The Philadelphia Story (George Cukor, 1940)

#24 Post by Roscoe » Fri Feb 12, 2021 9:16 am

For what it's worth, Senseabove's reading of the film comes across to me as 100% accurate -- I can't disagree with any of it. My annoyance with Tracy is always tempered with that little moment where her feelings are genuinely hurt when Mike rudely turns down her offer to let him use her mountain cabin. Sure, it's a perfectly well made and acted movie, and I'll cop to being pulled in (largely by Cary Grant's just otherworldly appeal) when I chance upon it on TCM, which has been running it into the ground for a few years now. I'm afraid, though, for all the skill and clarity, I'm always left with a shrug at film's end. They'll live happily ever after and all that. How nice for them.

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Re: The Philadelphia Story (George Cukor, 1940)

#25 Post by Michael Kerpan » Fri Feb 12, 2021 10:50 am

It is the father's remarks and the film's seemingly full (or almost full) endorsement of them that made this eventually unwatchable for me -- despite the fact that I still found aspects untied to this generally enjoyable. I can't think of any film of the era that I've enjoyed that was so ruthlessly sexist and misogynistic in this respect.

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