901 The Philadelphia Story

[bottlesofsmoke]

I mostly agree with what the others have said, though I think I probably enjoy the film a little bit more, if only because I find some of the characters and individual scenes to be very good and enjoyable. Cukor as a director of actors, to me, has a way of being very sympathetic to the some of his characters that I quite enjoy, even when I don’t always love the film as a whole (and I love a great many of his films), or in the case of The Philadelphia Story, a problem inherent in the script, ie the treatment of Tracy.

Cukor himself has admitted to not being a writer at all (I think he even said he never wrote a word of any of his movies, though I could be misremembering) but I think his strength is not just in directing actors, but also in interpreting scripts. To hear him talk about Little Women and David Copperfield, for example, and you see that he has a very good understanding of what makes the story, at its heart, work, which is why I think he was so successful adapting other works to the screen, even when limited by source material.

That is a long way of saying that Senseabove’s post really rings true to me, even if I still find some of the film problematic. I think Cukor understood the multiple purposes of the film (the humbling of Tracy/Hepburn; but also what senseabove so eloquently detailed) and executed them, even if they are occasionally, in my opinion, at cross purposes. That may explain why some people find the film so off-putting, I know it did me.

Great posts everyone.

[senseabove]

... (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..?)

I'm a great fan of Sylvia Scarlett. Join us over in the Grant List pre-game thread, where there's been more discussion of 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.

I'd say first that I don't think the movie is blithely unaware of entrenched sexism. It gets a few jabs in of its own—"Can you use a typewriter?" "No, thanks, I have one at home."—but I can buy that the father is a weak point, and a conduit for some too-easily unexamined sexism.

It's hard for me to swallow that the film endorses the father's view as something generalizable, though. I just don't think the movie cares very much about the father—his initial purpose is to serve as our first subject of Tracy's scorn, a scorn we're inclined to agree with (but, notably, for reasons likely different from the prevailing ones at the time—traditional, then; interpersonal, now), and in turn show us how Tracy's mother and sister react to her being vocal about it. He holds some heft because he is The Father speaking, but I think the script also undermines his presumptive authority—I struggle to believe that his whole "It's not about your mother, it's about me" argument would "fly by" in quite the same way it does now, as an old philanderer's excuse (so beautifully flayed alive by Varda). I also don't think the movie's really asking us to accept the father's position uncritically, especially since he almost immediately pivots from not blaming Mother to blaming Tracy, demonstrating again how standards change depending on the relationship: between him and his wife, it has nothing to do with her; between him and his daughter, it has everything to do with her. But Tracy's struggle against that position isn't situated in her relationship with her father. As the first subject of Tracy's scorn, how his standards and her standards clash and resolve is a minor case study for the movie, and one of Tracy's turning points is when he explains that, in his view, she's just a crap daughter and maybe that's why he had to chase after a young floosie; I struggle to think even contemporary audiences didn't taste how bitter that spoonful is, and it's a very concrete example that shows Tracy how her standards for herself are not everybody's standards for her, for better or for worse, which parlays, positively, into her realizations about her relationship with Dext, and, negatively, about hers with Mike. Nevertheless, I can recognize I might be being willfully generous on this point.

[Michael Kerpan]

I think I gave this more chances than my norm because I was looking for a way to salvage my initial liking for it, but I just couldn't find any way to do it.

[hearthesilence]

I really wish I liked this film more, but it's kind of stiff and underwhelming. There's nothing awful about, it's graced with three of Hollywood's greatest screen stars and the material is both thoughtful and intelligent. But even at its "wildest" it always felt straightjacketed by its tastefulness. In memory, it feels hampered by the fact that it relies so much on dense passages of dialogue, and more for the words rather than the performances, and that's not my idea of a great cinematic adaptation of a stage play.

And for the record, I like Cukor, quite a bit. I've seen roughly half of the three dozen or so films he's done, and none of them were any less than fine, even this one. The particular standouts are probably Sylvia Scarlett, Holiday, his segment of Gone with the Wind (approximately the first third), Adam's Rib, A Star Is Born, Bhowani Junction (even in its truncated form) and My Fair Lady - I consider these all genuinely great work. A cut below that are probably films like Camille, Gaslight, Born Yesterday, Let's Make Love and of course this one - not my personal favorites, but they're all distinguished by great career performances and others have made the case for them as great films.

The Philadelphia Story does look better in the proper context - James Stewart's performance is the least of the three leads, but by his standards, I do think it ranks with his better work at the time. (I think he became a much better film actor after this.) It doesn't touch his wonderful performance in The Shop Around the Corner (which came out nearly a year before) but I much prefer it to Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (even if his Oscar was allegedly won for that overcooked piety). And it does feel like a real turning point for Katharine Hepburn - I prefer her in the similar Holiday but this is arguably where she completely matured into the earthy yet sophisticated star of legend (or at least the film where that image really got popular notice).

[Fred Holywell]

A kinescope of the 1954 live TV version of The Philadelphia Story is newly available here. It's directed by Sidney Lumet and stars Dorothy Maguire, John Payne, Richard Carlson, Herbert Marshall and Mary Astor.