Year: 1949
Director: George Cukor
Stars:
Spencer Tracy (Adam Bonner)
Katharine Hepburn (Amanda Bonner)
Judy Halliday (Doris Attinger)
Tom Ewell (Warren Attinger)
David Wayne (Kip Lurie)
Awards:
Nominated for the Best Writing, Story and Screenplay Oscar in 1951.
Nominated for the Best Supporting Actress Golden Globe in 1951.
It won the award of the National Film Preservation Board in 1992.
Nominated for the Best Written American Comedy award by the Writers Guild of America, USA in 1950 and 1951.
Curiosities:
- One of the first scenes with Judy Halliday talking to Katharine Hepburn she seems to be shaking. She was not acting that moment. Since she was inexperienced at acting she was very nervous of performing close to Hepburn.
- Back in 2008 the American Film Institute described the film as one of the 10 greatest romantic comedies of all times.
- One of the most famous quotes of the movie was: “It’s the hilarious answer to who wears pants”
- It’s based on a true story of the divorce of two cinema actors: Raymond Massey and Adrianne Allen.
- Spencer Tracy always insisted to appear within the end credits close to Katharine Hepburn. The scriptwriter Garson Kanin told him once: “She is a lady, you are a gentleman… Should ladies go first?” Tracy answered: “This is a movie you fool, not a lifeboat”.
- The script was entirely written thinking of the main couple of actors.
- The film was shot in New York and like in the rest of the movies where Tracy and Hepburn appeared together, both slept in separate buildings to avoid rumours.
I couldn’t wait to watch it again!
You’ll have the feeling of floating after watching this film. The taste in your mouth will be so good that you won’t want it to finish. At least, that is what happens to me each time I see this couple acting together. In this film they are sublime!
They are funny, ironic, racy and over all clever.
The comedy is a sparkling approach to the eternal battle of genres. Maybe no other movie in the history has represented so well the women fight to achieve a position into society the same way men always had.
Over 50 years have already past and the film is still fresh like back then. It’s possible that in the moment it was shot didn’t get as many prizes as deserved precisely because of that, because of how delicate was the matter.
The quality of the script and the extreme importance of the subject still today make it a movie that you’ll never be fed up of.
The main couple, maybe the most solid and convincing one in the history of cinema will lead you from one scene to another very comfortably. Then you’ll be looking forward seeing them acting together again. You’ll wish being part of the complicity between them once again.
Because the most remarkable thing about this film is, with no doubt, the final fight, where no one loses but all win.
A magnificent comedy….
Official Trailer:
Unforgettable scenes:
Images: