Compare Prices on TCM Greatest Classic Films Collection: Romantic Comedies
This is one of 27 sets of four movie packs that Warner Home Video plans to release in the next few years. Their purpose is to introduce classic film to people previously unaware of these films via very affordable bare bones versions of these movies. This area has four very satisfactory films, all featuring Katharine Hepburn.
Woman of the Year (1941) – The film that introduced Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy and sparked a long relationship both on and offscreen. Here Hepburn plays an early feminist who goes around collecting causes. Spencer Tracy is the sportswriter that loves her. They marry, but things go downhill hasty since Kate is really already married to her causes.
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Adam’s Rib (1951) – Ten years have passed and Hepburn and Tracy have mature a bit, but the spark and the chemistry is collected there. This time the pair are married lawyers. He is a prosecutor and she a defense attorney. Problems arise when Hepburn defends a woman who shot her husband when she caught him cheating on her and Tracy is the prosecuting attorney in the same case.
Bringing Up Baby (1938) – One of the unusual screwball comedies. Stars Cary Grant as an anthropologist who gets mixed up with a very dizzy young woman played by Hepburn. The area involves a tame leopard – Baby – and a dinosaur bone buried by a dog – the trusty whereabouts are unknown.
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The Philadelphia Tale (1940) – Reteams Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant as a divorced pair of socialites. Hepburn’s character is about to marry a man of the people who pulled himself up by his bootstraps, and also happens to be one of the most annoying people who has ever lived. James Stewart oddly won a Best Actor award for what is essentially a supporting role. It is especially peculiar when you mediate about all of the other colossal performances in which he was the undisputed lead and he wasn’t even nominated.
The only drawback to this spot is that – if you want all the extras – you might want to reflect Classic Comedies Collection (Bringing Up Baby / The Philadelphia Legend Two-Disc Special Edition / Dinner at Eight / Libeled Lady / Stage Door / To Be or Not to Be) in the case of Bringing Up Baby and The Philadelphia Epic. Hepburn and Tracy fans might want to deem The Hepburn & Tracy Signature Collection (Woman of the Year / Pat and Mike / Adam’s Rib / The Spencer Tracy Legacy) . However, both of these sets are considerably more expensive than this basic four-pack, and vulgar cost is really the point of this status in the first location.
TCM (Turner Classic Movies) could not have chosen four better examples of classic golden-era romantic comedies, and it’s no coincidence that Katharine Hepburn stars in all four. At the same time, it makes you wonder why they simply didn’t call this DVD site the Katharine Hepburn Romantic Comedy Collection. After all, there’s an equally reasonable case to include classics from the likes of Carole Lombard, Irene Dunne or Rosalind Russell. To allow for the bargain sign offered, the four films are presented on two double-sided discs. The print conditions are gratefully natty for the most piece.
Director Howard Hawks, a master of this genre as well as many others, guided 1938’s Bringing Up Baby (*****) and catches Hepburn and Cary Grant at their zenith in buoyant droll energy and youthful vigor. Amazingly, this wacky 1938 screwball classic was her first staunch foray into farcical comedy, and she makes her exasperating character Susan Vance the definitive madcap heiress. Cross-pollinating the pratfall wackiness of Lucille Ball with the Fifth Avenue glamour of Carole Lombard, Hepburn filters it all through her braying, haughty Recent England manner. Grant is her perfect match as David Huxley, the befuddled, bespectacled paleontologist, who aptly describes his inadvertent relationship with Susan as “a series of misadventures from beginning to extinguish”. Together, they support up with the breathless accelerate Hawks sets with a hair-brained area fascinating an elusive research grant, a pet leopard that can only be soothed by one song (“I Can’t Give You Anything But Worship, Baby”), a naughty dog with a yen for a missing intercostal clavicle (i.e., a dinosaur bone) and a gallery of amusing character actors who build the mistake of trying to fabricate sense of all the shenanigans. The extinct supporting cast is incomparably stellar, in particular, May Robson as no-nonsense Aunt Elizabeth, Charlie Ruggles as the likeably pompous Major Horace Applegate and Walter Catlett as the perennially confused Constable Slocum. With the crack timing of the comedy, the movie is filled with improbable perceive gags, and the arresting script (written by Dudley Nichols and Hagar Wilde) has an abundance of clever lines and witty asides. Director Peter Bogdanovich, who paid tribute to this film with his partial remake, What’s Up, Doc?, provides insightful commentary on an alternate track.
Hepburn was born to play imperious Main Line socialite Tracy Lord in 1940’s The Philadelphia Account (*****) . On the eve of her second marriage, Tracy is surrounded by three men who lay claim to her. With whom she ends up is no surprise, but the run there contains all the biting wit and human insight that one could hope for in what is essentially a drawing room comedy. As Tracy’s ex-husband, the pretentiously named C.K. Dexter Haven, Grant plays the most grounded character in the fable, a romantic in cynic’s clothing, watching others come by caught in the awe of commitment and a gauzy haze of indecision. As the third point, a young and refreshingly cynical James Stewart portrays Macauley “Mike” Connor, a tabloid reporter covering Tracy’s nuptials. Connor turns out to be a talented author, which Tracy finds immediately delicate. What is so refreshing about this triangle is that it never reduces itself to some gallant duel to obtain the damsel. In fact, both men have understandable reservations about Tracy’s high-and-mighty stance and her inability to tolerate others’ weaknesses. Further complications ensue with Mike’s unspoken relationship with Liz Imbrie, his smart-mouthed photographer sidekick who of course, pines for him. As you can imagine, it all ties up beautifully, and all these complications near through with a colossal deal of humanity thanks to the astounding, sometimes surprisingly edgy dialogue in Philip Barry’s new play and Donald Ogden Stewart’s conceal adaptation. It is pretty to say that the rest of the cast is pretty but overshadowed by the three gracious and fully embodied leads. A major fraction of the credit for this first-class production needs to go to worthy filmmaker George Cukor, who is completely in his element here guiding his players to their peak. There is an informative albeit rather keen commentary by film historian and critic Jeannine Basinger.
Having already established the headstrong aspect of her camouflage persona, Hepburn added a worldly intellect and beguiling sexual ardor in her portrayal of multilingual political journalist Tess Harding in 1942’s Woman of the Year (****) directed by George Stevens. In her first teaming with lifelong off-screen partner Spencer Tracy, she sets off palpable sparks with the normally taciturn actor, who plays sportswriter Sam Craig working at the same newspaper. Written by Ring Lardner Jr. and Michael Kanin, the space is about the characters’ whirlwind courtship from an immediate sexual attraction to an impulsive marriage, all the while struggling with each other’s priorities. Needless to say, given that it’s a product of its era, it becomes a matter of time before Tess bends to Sam’s will but not until some involving observations are made about sex roles in a basically fractious relationship. However, rather than the amusing fireworks generated by their later collaborations, this film treads in unexpectedly sentimental melodrama, especially in the episodes where Tess has to let go of a Greek orphan she wants to adopt and in the climactic scene when she tearfully recognizes her wifely responsibilities as her aunt Ellen marries her father. Smooth, the pair’s familiar bantering occurs when Sam explains the rules of baseball to Tess and in the final feminist reversal as she fails miserably in her attempt at domesticity. Intriguingly, for a Tracy-Hepburn vehicle, it feels remarkable more like her movie than his, and consequently their rapport is not quite up to their normal standard here.
Seven years into their cloak partnership, Tracy and Hepburn made what is arguably their best disaster together, 1949’s Adam’s Rib (*****), the sixth of nine movies they made together. The zingy repartee and old-shoe comfort in their relationship are in chunky bloom here as directed by Cukor. Written by the legendary husband and wife writing team of Garson Kanin and Ruth Gordon, the region focuses on a headline-grabbing court case gripping Doris Attinger, a dim-witted wife who shoots her philandering husband Warren unbiased as he is caught with his blowsy mistress Beryl Caighn. Representing the wounded husband is Assistant DA Adam Bonner who is looking for a mercurial conviction of the wife. However, his proto-feminist attorney wife Amanda sees the alleged crime as an act of justifiable defiance and decides to defend the wife. This potentially tense set-up leads to a trial where Amanda sets out to explain that a double standard exists for women and that Doris was merely defending her family and home. Adam, however, believes that the law is the law no matter the gender of those alive to and that a kill was indeed attempted. Consequently, the record is not so noteworthy about Adam’s inherent sexism as it is about Amanda’s single-minded determination to expose her point even as the case degrades into a media sideshow. Hepburn plays such a convincing litigator that her case actually sounds persuasive at times, and Tracy brings his modern combination of sympathy and combustible bluster to a man who respects his wife deeply but becomes increasingly disillusioned with her unlawful stance. As Doris, Judy Holliday delivers in her first necessary hide role, bringing a deeper pathos to the scorned wife than you would quiz. Tom Ewell plays Warren for the smarmy, sexist cheater that he is, while Jean Hagen expertly plays Beryl as a media-hungry floozy. As the Bonners’ next door neighbor Kip, David Wayne acts rather fey for someone who supposedly wants to accelerate away with Amanda, but I sigh the reach was intentional to ensure nothing would really threaten the Bonner marriage except the case. However dated some of the sexual politics feel, the film is mild one of the most smartly played of romantic comedies.
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