THE PHILADELPHIA STORY is such an extraordinarily well-done film that one can watch it repeatedly, reveling each time in new and hidden details. It strikes the perfect balance of being spectacularly well-acted, hysterically funny, and delightfully silly while maintaining an elegant veneer. The cast is nearly overwhelming in its quality, with Hepburn and Grant turning in especially fine performances. Jimmy Stewart is also superb, though he won an Oscar for this year that he probably didn't deserve. The Academy in 1940 may have been giving him the award as an apology for not having won the year before for MR. SMITH GOES TO WASHINGTON. Unfortunately, this meant that Jimmy Stewart's best friend Henry Fonda failed to win for one of the finest performances in the history of American cinema, as Tom Joad in THE GRAPES OF WRATH. Still, although the Oscar clearly should have gone to Fonda, Stewart manages a great turn. He and Grant manage a great moment when Stewart adlibbed a hiccup, and Grant, not batting an eye, adlibbed, "Excuse me." The rest of the cast is flawless. Too many excel to mention, but special mention must be made of Roland Young as Uncle Willie, Virginia Weidler in a marvelous turn as Tracy Lord's precocious younger sister, and the erstwhile Errol Flynn nemesis Henry Daniell as the devious and unscrupulous Sidney Kidd.

Although this film holds up magnificently upon reviewings, there is nothing like seeing it for the first time. I remember vividly how exciting it was to watch this in the lamentably demised Lincoln Theater in New Haven, Connecticut, having absolutely no idea how the film was going to end only five minutes before the closing credits. Who will Tracy marry? Will she marry? How will the film managed to tie up all the loose ends.

I have a list of my all time favorite lines from films. One of my favorites comes from this one. On the morning after Tracy has gotten rip-roaringly drunk, she has almost no memories of what happened, but what she does recall makes her fear that she might have been in a compromising situation with Jimmy Stewart. After Stewart assures the confused and fearful Tracy Lord that nothing happened because she was drunk and "there are rules about that sort of thing," the infinitely relieved Tracy says, "I think men are wonderful."

The film has managed to permeate our culture in subtle ways, from inspiring musical remakes, to providing famous adult movie stars with their names, to providing foundations for jokes (in the Rocky and Bullwinkle adventure "The Ruby Yacht of Omar Khayyam," whenever Bullwinkle sees his jewel encrusted small boat, he mutters under his breath, "Yar, yar").


My, she was yar...   November 12, 2003
 41 out of 43 found this review helpful

They make few movies of the level of quality as "The Philadelphia Story." This movie is just full of life, good and bad. Cary Grant, James Stewart and Katharine Hepburn are a trifecta of astounding talent, and they blend together with ease and style. Like real people, everyone has their faults and their strengths. Everyone is right and wrong at the same time, in their own way.

The dialog is so amazing, you want to quote it at every opportunity, although your life probably doesn't provide the opportunity to drop these kinds of quotes. The "High Society" at play, and the lowbrow crashers making their nickels and dimes all the while allowing their pretensions to art...this is great drama.

The DVD is not particularly exciting, and is a surprising let down for such an amazing film, however a film this great doesn't need extras. The main course is filling enough.

Definitely something you will watch over and over again. One of the best.


A Joke Of A Farce   August 25, 2001
 14 out of 34 found this review helpful

An unmitigated disaster - and I speak as someone with great affection for vintage film, comedy in general and these actors specifically. I'm not entirely surprised that THE PHILADELPHIA STORY garners the absurd high praise that it does, though. Every aspect of the play and film is utterly phony, but in that high-minded, self-congratulatory manner that appeals to middlebrow audiences who point to films like this as emblems of their own good taste. I can't think of another 'classic' that's routinely considered an actor's dream in which the actors have been so ill-served by their roles and dialogue. They're all embalmed up there on the screen - not just stagebound but hidebound. The well-known plot revolves around the imminent society wedding of ice princess Tracy Lord to a self-made prig; in attendance are her archly witty family, her archly witty ex-husband (who pines for her still) and a pair of archly witty tabloid-style reporters (who resent her spoiled ways and vast wealth). The proceedings commence in reasonably lively fashion, but it's not long before the forced mechanics of Philip Barry's conception are audibly creaking, by which point the high-toned literary bons mot start landing with little thuds; the ghastly speechifying, the would-be ironic wisdom and poetic drunk-scenes soon take over the movie and THE PHILADELPHIA STORY becomes an endurance test for anyone who has ever truly enjoyed watching Hepburn, Grant, Stewart et al in anything worthy of their talents. Grant does what he can with his role, which mostly calls for worldly-wise detached bemusement, but Jimmy Stewart is trapped with scenes and dialogue that seem like a deliberate attempt to sabotage his naturalism - his tremendous rapport with movie audiences. His famous 'drunk scene' with Hepburn is so horridly bogus and actorish that you wonder if the Academy gave him that Oscar as a form of combat-pay - you can't not wince hearing him swoon, "There's a magnificence in you, Tracy", bathed in Metro's most gossamer lighting. Ruth Hussey is wasted in a completely thankless role, John Howard's stuffy bridegroom is similarly a stock character/cipher, and Roland Young's old roue, meant to be irresistably irascible, sets your teeth on edge throughout the film. Yet all of these performers get off easy compared to what Barry, and Metro, have done to poor Katherine Hepburn here. The Tracy Lord role is written as a harsh and demeaning caricature of Hepburn's own public persona; she garnered acclaim and a return ticket to the Hollywood A-list for sending up her publicly perceived hyperneurotic brittleness with great good cheer. She must indeed have been desperate to redeem her image by playing a role this insulting: the 'Hepburn' being spoofed never once exhibits her fierce intelligence, dramatic intensity or even her basic decency or humanity. 'Tracy Lord' is a spoiled, smug, self-centered and utterly insufferable stick-figure whose entire dramatic purpose is to be told by every other character how cold and fraudulent and incapable of human emotion she is, over and over, until the audience is fairly salivating for the cleansing humiliation and comeuppance that will render her, at last, a 'real' woman. She gives her lines more feeling and intuition than they deserve (when she's not forced to read dialogue expressly designed to make her look foolish or hateful). In the end, though THE PHILADELPHIA STORY did renew Hepburn's Hollywood career, it reinforced the audience's distrustful perceptions of her, so that generations of moviegoers have come to think of Tracy Lord and Katherine Hepburn as one and the same. But there's a reason THE PHILADELPHIA STORY is rarely, if ever, revived as a stage property: it's horribly false and condescending, and one could single out the phonies in the audience with ease - they'd be the only ones laughing, while the majority of the attendants would punctuate their long silences with nervous coughing between impatient glances at their watches. Thank the Lord at least for Virginia Weidler in this movie, as the kid gives the only unaffected performance in the whole show. Lucky for her that Philip Barry didn't think enough of the character to devote the same 'care' he took with the lead roles.


I've never been able to get the magic   September 9, 2004
 14 out of 61 found this review helpful

I am a pre-war comedy enthusiast. Since the directors were restricted by the Hays code, many of the 1930s comedies depended on wit, goofy physical comedy, double ententres, and a manic energy to get the laughs. The result: comedies that are still funny and smart today. Some famous examples include Capra's It Happened One Night, the newspaper comedy His Girl Friday, the enchanting Shop Around the Corner, the Carole Lombard comedies, Bringing Up Baby ... The last comedy had the Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn pairing. It's a good cinematic match: Grant's cruel humor and elegance mix well with Hepburn's brittle, patrician charm. Bringing Up Baby was a box-office failure, but it's funny, warm, and absurd.
Two years later, Hepburn chose as a comeback "vehicle" of sorts (she was labeled box office poison after a string of failures) The Philadelphia Story, starring Cary Grant, James Stewart and John Howard. The story is of an heiress, Tracy Lord, and her remarriage to the respectable George (Howard). On the eve of her wedding, reporter Mike Connor (Stewart) and Tracy's ex-husband C.K. Dexter Haven (Grant) crash the festivities, with the predictable results. Connor and Tracy also have a brief flirtation.
The movie has a reputation as a "classic" and I hate to sound grouchy but I think it's overrated. For one thing, director George Cukor was known as an actress's director but this is a case where he might have given too much leeway to his actress, Hepburn. She indulges in all her mannerisms (the arch looks, the halting scratchy voice, the head-shaking "vulnerability") and except for a few funny moments takes herself way, way too seriously for this type of comedy. The famous scene where Tracy breaks Dexter's golf clubs is an exception in the movie -- mostly it's her talking a LOT. Hepburn doesnt have the natural rapidfire wit of a lot of screwball actresses and plus I just dont think the screenplay is all that funny. Unlike Bringing Up Baby, Hepburn here seems afraid to play for laughs. Her Tracy is haughty and tough-tender like a lot of Hepburn heroines, but she's not funny.
James Stewart won an Oscar for this movie, and that might be the worst Oscar call in history (they passed over Henry Fonda in Grapes of Wrath). Mike Connor is a small role, and his flirtation with Tracy Lord in the end is inconsequential to the movie. And plus, Stewart is funnier in a lot of other movies (like Shop Around the Corner). As for Grant, his character is a cipher. He has his usual charm and zaniness, but without really good lines, he's wasted.
The movie is also, at 112 minutes, overlong. In fact, the movie on the whole falls into a lot of "star vehicle" traps -- arch dialogue, overlength, and a general feeling of "tries too hard" to be a masterpiece. And it's not really funny. In the end, it's like who the hell cares who Tracy ends up with? I just want the movie to be over.



This is why I watch the classics.   May 3, 2001
 13 out of 14 found this review helpful

Hollywood has a long history of taking Broadway theatricals and turning them into successful films. In 1940, this process produced "The Philadelphia Story" which had been very popular while on the stage with Katherine Hepburn. As it happened, Katherine was given a lot of control over the film. She chose all the leads and virtually had the film adaptation custom crafted for her. The end result was a fabulous cast, great performances and one of the funniest scripts ever produced. One final bit of trivia, the studio claimed to have shot the entire film without the need for any second takes.

For the most part, this is an interesting film because it has interesting characters. And like any good cuisine, the ingredients are added with impeccable timing and in such a way as to produce a very spicy result. Instead of identifying with one central character, we are forced to wear the shoes of at least three. James Stewart plays, Macaulay Connor, a dissatisfied reporter working for a society rag. He represents the white-collar class. Hepburn and Cary Grant each represent the upper class. Hepburn is Tracy Samantha Lord, a wealthy heiress who is planning to wed for the second time, after rejecting her first husband on the grounds of what seems to be alcoholism. Grant plays that ex-husband, C. K. Dexter Haven, a now reformed drinker who is still in love with Tracy but is forced to make her life more difficult on the day before her upcoming nuptials.

There is a strong social commentary within the film. Tracy's betrothed, George Kittredge, is a working class lad who has worked his way to success. He is possibly the only unlikable character in the movie; as his ambitions are a little too obvious, his mind a little to shallow and his love a little too conditional. There is some early foreshadowing of doom for their relationship. The most obvious clue comes when George tries to mount his horse, after refusing help, and makes a botch of it. Each little scene is jam packed with meaning. The movie would certainly make an interesting study for film students.

All of the main characters, barring George, go through significant changes throughout the movie, even if they only change in our perceptions. Tracy's ice-princess veneer is shattered and she becomes a warm, vulnerable and loving woman. Macaulay drops his prejudices, finds some moral fibre and finally stands up for what he believes in. Dexter forgives himself and in doing so, forgives Tracy. Even Tracy's Father turns out to be a caring and wise figure, instead of the distant, immoral playboy we hear described at the start.

Overall the film is too clever for words. They just don't make films like this anymore. It actually relies on the audience to get the joke. The puns, cultural references and interactions are not forced down our throat with a laugh track and a snare-drum. That's not to say you have to work hard to "get" this film; it's more like talking with your friends; you just understand, without further explanation. Everything about this film is perfect, which makes it a delight to watch time and time again. If you don't mind classic black and whites, you'll love Philadelphia Story.