Katharine Hepburn is a woman who I generally remember for her overall toughness. Maybe that comes from mostly seeing her in movies where she was a bit older than she is in 1942’s Woman of the Year, but that’s just how it is. However, her first appearance on screen in this movie has her adjusting a shoe as Spencer Tracy walks in and gets a look not at her face, but at her legs. That’s a textbook example of the male gaze there, and while it isn’t surprising to see it in a movie from 1942, I was a little surprised because I don’t think I had ever seen it done with Hepburn before. She just…never seemed the type, being more the woman who won her man over with her mind and her personality and not so much her looks.
But again, most of what I’ve seen her in was stuff she made when she was older, and this was 1942. That it only really happened in this one scene means I can mention it and move on.
There’s a small problem at the fictional New York Chronicle: two of its reporters are having a spat on the page. Well-off and well-connected political columnist Tess Harding (Hepburn) believes baseball should be abolished during the course of the war. Sportswriter Sam Craig (Tracy) vehemently disagrees. The two had never met before, They don’t even work on the same floor. Their editor calls them into the office to work things out. Sam takes Tess to a baseball game to explain how the game works. Tess takes Sam to a high society political function. The two somehow hit it off and decide to get married at a small ceremony that fits into Tess’s busy social calendar, something Sam isn’t happy about, and their wedding night is put on hold when a Yugoslavian refugee Tess knows shows up with a crowd at the couple’s new home. That is more or less how it goes with everything.
That includes Tess taking in a Greek refugee child without consulting Sam, but then assuming the boy will be OK by himself when she goes off to pick up the “Woman of the Year” award while Sam refuses to go because someone needs to take care of that kid. The couple are having problems stemming from their differing expectations of life based around their gender, class, and a host of other issues. Sam, arguably a more pragmatic man, is more old fashioned in his ways of doing things while idealistic Tess moves in social circles and cares about making political statements that would be the approval of her father, a former ambassador and United States Senator. That Tess’s father and Sam’s mother have a romance going on the side is something else altogether.
As far as the movie itself goes, it’s fun. Hepburn and Tracy made the first of their nine movies together here, and they had good chemistry from the start. The dialogue is crackling, and if I thought Hepburn looked young compared to other work I’ve seen her in, well, go does Tracy. The way the movie worked around the idea of pregnancy, something it obviously couldn’t discuss directly thanks to censorship standards, was rather fun leading to the reveal of the refugee child. And when necessary, there was some good slapstick too as Tess, in an attempt to get her husband back, tries to make breakfast for him despite clearly having no idea how to do so. All things being equal, it’s a delightful movie.
That said, it is also very much a movie of its time. Sam doesn’t seem to have to learn too much about being a better husband. Yes, he’s out of place in her world, but it does seem as if Tess needs to change more for him than the other way around. It’s his wisdom that saves the marriage in the end, and even though he has to do things to accommodate her, it is clear the movie sets him up as the smarter and more dominant one even if Tess is the one who speaks multiple languages and writes columns the average person can’t seem to understand. Again, this is from 1942 and that’s to be expected, but it is one aspect that hasn’t aged well and should be remembered for modern audiences.
Grade: A-
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