The Philadelphia Story is a 1940 romantic comedy starring Katherine Hepburn, Cary Grant, James Stewart, Ruth Hussey, Roland Young, John Halliday, Mary Nash, and Virginia Weilder. It's based on a play by Philip Barry, written as a vehicle for Hepburn.
Socialite Tracy Lord (Hepburn) divorces C. K. Dexter Haven (Grant) for his drinking and just generally not being up to her standards, and then some time later, is remarrying to a noveau riche fellow named George Kittredge (John Howard). Dexter comes back into the picture, disapproving of the new marriage, and a tabloid reporter named Connor (Stewart) with his photographer (Hussey) finagle their way into the Lord household to take some snaps and write an article about the wedding.
There's a ruse that gets them in, but that lasts all of about five minutes (Lord isn't stupid and susses out right away that Dexter is behind this, but Dexter insists that he's doing it to keep an article about Tracy's father (Halliday) having an affair out of the press). The protagonists circle each other, snipe, drink, and Lord finds herself torn between her fiancee, her ex, and Connor. By the end, Tracy learns to stop taking herself so seriously and remarries Dexter.
You know, I'm not one to say "oh, modern day (whatever) sucks, things were so much better back when", but holy shit, if this is an example of a rom-com of yesterday, maybe the Production Code had its good points. The characters here actually have some chemistry. There's some complexity to the relationships, there's not really a bad guy - Kittredge misjudges Tracy, but no one is exactly blameless. If anything, it's simply that relationships between adults are nuanced and complex, and love isn't simple. Compare/contrast with the boy-meets-girl, boy-loses-girl, boy-gets-girl-back formula that tends to infect rom-coms and it's easy to feel a little insulted. But with that said, I think it's always useful to remember that classics become classics for a reason, or put another way, I'm sure there was just as much crap in the genre in the 30s and 40s, but the cream rises to the top.
Anyway, snappy dialog, great acting all around, definitely deserves its acclaim.
My Grade: A
Rewatch Value: Medium
Next up: Pirates: Band of Misfits
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