Yar, you be here: The Philadelphia Story > Customer Reviews
The Philadelphia Story Customer Reviews (13 - 15 of 44 Reviews)
Mighty "yar"
"You're slipping, Red. I used to be afraid of that look - the withering glance of the goddess."
The movie begins with one of the most classic scenes in film history. The audience does not know who the characters are in the first scene, and no dialogue is used. We see Cary Grant angrily slam the front door of a mansion and stalk towards a car parked out front. A moment later, Katharine Hepburn, dressed in a nightgown, follows him out, carrying a bag of golf clubs. After removing one club, she contemptuously throws the bag filled with the rest at him, haughtily breaks the one club over her knee, throws the halves at him, and stomps back towards the open doorway. Grant follows her, taps her on the shoulder...and when she wheels around, he pulls his fist back as if to punch her, but instead mashes her face in the palm of his hand, shoving her backward through the open doorway, where we next see her rubbing her neck as she sits up. The scene ends.
Cut to "Two Years Later" as the title informs the audience; the day before Philadelphian blue-blood Tracy Lord's (Katharine Hepburn) second wedding. The audience also realize that the mashee in the opening scene and the masher were formally husband and wife: Tracy Lord (Katharine Hepburn) and C.K. Dexter Haven (Cary Grant). Soon Dexter has makes a surprise visit to the Lord household on the eve of the wedding. Tracy is about to marry George Kittredge (John Howard), her stuffy and rather chauvinistic well-to-do fiance. What Tracy doesn't know at first is that Dexter, perhaps seeking revenge on Tracy, has arranged for Mike Connor (James Stewart), a writer for a tabloid-like magazine named "Spy", and Liz Imbrie (Ruth Hussey), a "Spy" photographer, to do a story on the wedding under the guise of being friends of a friend of the family. Once Tracy is informed by Dexter that she must either allow the story to be written or her father's ongoing illicit affair with a dancer will be the big story instead she consents, but Connor and Imbrie do not know that she knows who their real identities and purpose...and she plots to "really give them something to write about...we'll set them on their ears!"
The first scene where Tracy meets Mike Connor and Liz Imbrie, and practically interviews them sets the tone for the rest of the film.
To reveal more of the story would spoil it for anyone who hasn't seen the film. But in the next twenty-four hours Tracy and the others find their lives turned upside-down in an alternately hilarious and touching series of events.
Katharine Hepburn made the extremely wise move on the advise of Howard Hughes, whom she was dating at the time, of buying the film rights to Philip Barry's play - she had been a hit onstage in the role, which was written for her. Recently having been labeled "box-office poison", even being offered a role in a film tentatively entitled "Mother Carey's Chickens", it was the only way to guarantee her the role in any filming of the play. She had spent a year on Broadway in the film version, and interrupted the tour of the play to film it for MGM. For the film, she had wanted Clark Gable and Spencer Tracy for the roles of Haven and Connor. She got Grant and Stewart - hardly shabby! And better choices anyway, IMHO. Donald Ogdent Stewart took over for the screenplay adaptation, as Barry had apparently requested too much money. The dialogue is some of the best of any film of its time, and Hepburn, at her most radiant, is beautifully costumed by designer Adrian. She is at times "lit from within", as Stewart's character Mike tells her, and at other times "made of bronze" (as her father, played by John Halliday) asserts. Dinah, Tracy's young sister, is portrayed to hilarious effect by child actress Virginia Weidler, who makes her appearance to the reporter duo in ballet toe shoes, spewing French and finishing her introduction to them by manically playing and singing a lusty dance-hall song on the piano. Pinch-prone Uncle Willie (Roland Young) adds great spice and fun with his smaller part.
Side note: In the scene where Mike arrives drunk at Dexter's house late one evening, Stewart purposely hiccups to try to crack Grant's straight-faced resolve - and it works.
"The Philadelphia Story" won six Academy Award nominations: Best Picture, Best Actor (Stewart), Best Actress (Hepburn), Best Supporting Actress (Hussey), Best Screenplay (Donald Ogden Stewart), and Best Director (George Cukor). James Stewart and Donald Ogden Stewart won their nominations (Stewart's sole Oscar win), and although Katharine Hepburn did not win for this role (she lost to Ginger Rogers for her performance in "Kitty Foyle"), she received the New York Film Critics' Award. The film revived her professional reputation, was a huge success, is of course considered to be one of the all-time classics of romantic comedy, and my personal favorite of Hepburn's films of this genre.
The course of true love gathers no moss
At age 45 I'm just getting around to seeing a lot of the classics I'd always ignored. All I knew of "The Philadelphia Story" until this week was that it was a high society comedy with James Stewart. Sounded a bit blah to me. Imagine my surprise to find a screwball romantic comedy that happens to take place in high society, and to find Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant as well. I guess I never paid the film much attention because of its boring title; sounds like a Revolutionary War film about the history of the city.
Instead we have a hilarious picture based on a stage play. It ends just as I expected it would from the opening scene, but, with all the glorious twists and turns in between, who cares if it's ultimately a bit predictable? The joys of the film include some unexpectedly fall-down funny moments of both verbal and physical comedy, wonderful lighting (it seems films in color can never quite get the lighting to be a character in the way they could in these old B&W flicks), and the wonder of how director George Cukor managed to make this stage play look quite un-stagey.
Other Amazon reviewers may grouse about the Oscar awarded to Stewart (I agree that had to be a make-good), but the film was nominated in several other categories, including a Best Actress nomination for Hepburn. This is a lady who deserved every bit of attention she ever got; history has borne out her brilliance even in the days when she wasn't appreciated. Kudos to Warner Home Video for such a great package, with all the extras attached, to maintain the status of "The Philadelphia Story" as one of the greatest films ever made. Just wish that title had even 1% of the pizzazz of the movie itself.
Vintage Chick Flick
The liner notes for "The Philadelphia Story" describes it as a sophisticated romantic comedy. Automatically my hackles go up and say "Oh, No! Chick Flick!" To the film's credit, it is uniformly well acted. Though Jimmy Stewart received the Oscar for his work here I thought the best performance here was delivered by Ruth Hussey as Elizabeth Embree, Stewart's no-nonsense photographer. The script is intelligently written. That said, the film at 1 hour, 52 minutes drags. There's not enough substance here to warrant that length. Translated from a stage play and it shows. The film suffers from staginess and director George Cukor didn't seem able to open the film up from it's origins. Not a complete waste of time but not the classic that it's been billed as.
| Previous Page | 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 | Next Page |