When I did the AFI Countdown over on Gabbing Geek, I was for the most part watching (and writing up) films I had seen before. There were a decent number that were new to me, and for the most part, I actually liked a lot of the ones I was watching for the first time. That said, there were some exceptions, and The Philadelphia Story was one of those exceptions. I can readily see the reason why many people might adore The Philadelphia Story, but it didn’t work for me. I did try out the musical remake High Society later, and while some of the problematic elements were gone, others remained. High Society just had the advantage of Louis Armstrong hanging around and playing with his band at various points for some reason.
But the problems with The Philadelphia Story for me come down to playing a lecherous old man for laughs and some thoughts on divorce that older films and TV shows employed that haven’t aged terribly well.
So, in a nutshell, here’s my problem with The Philadelphia Story: it basically suggests a young woman, Tracy Samantha Lord (the ever-formidable Katherine Hepburn), is wrong about pretty much everything involving her romantic life because she has too high an opinion of herself. Now, a little ego-deflation isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it also completely lets her ex-husband C.K. Dexter Haven (Cary Grant) off the hook. There’s no real reason given for why these two got divorced in the first place. A silent scene at the beginning shows Dex moving out, Tracy snapping one of his golf clubs, and his going to punch her, thinking better of it, and instead shoving her onto her butt with a hand to the face.
You know, I would think that a marriage that ended that way, one with physical abuse to the wife, maybe should have ended. Let’s consider, for a moment, how many social conservatives decry how many marriages end in divorce. There’s a good reason for that: the law changed that made it easier, and while I think many marriages can make things work if both parties truly want it to, the fact that divorce was once so hard to get means a lot of people probably stayed in completely miserable marriages, and it wasn’t unheard of for couples to just make up stories of infidelity or abuse as these were in many places the only legal way to get a divorce in the United States. I can say some of this while being divorced myself. Could my marriage have worked out if my ex-wife and I both put the effort in? I’d rather not say here, but I will say I largely like the life that I have now, a life that would probably be very different if I hadn’t gotten divorced. Is it better? That’s a matter of opinion. All I’ll say for certain is I have no regrets in life and generally believe things worked out for the best for me.
So, really, having a film where the happy ending is a woman decides to remarry her ex-husband at a moment’s notice since everyone was there to see someone get married, particularly since the actual groom just walked out because the normally decisive and headstrong Tracy couldn’t decide between three different men doesn’t pass my personal smell test.
And yes, I said three men because in the mix is longtime critic of the high society types Macaulay “Mike” Connor (Jimmy Stewart), who, when he isn’t railing against the very existence of high society and an interest in them despite the fact he works for a gossip magazine, seems to fall for the highest of high society women in the form of Tracy. I noted in my first write-up that they make a better match than Dex and Tracy, mostly because they’re both snobs. But this time, allow me to point out that this film ends with Dex and Tracy remarried and Mike set up with his photographer partner Liz (Ruth Hussey). Liz had a couple scenes here and there when she looked heartsick that Mike was clearly going around with Tracy, but in the end, he just accepts her because…because….because he has to. It’s a screwball comedy. Of course he’ll fall in love with her once someone points out how smitten she is with him. Besides, it also reinforces class divides as the more working-class reporters can get together while the upper-class Dex and Tracy can remarry.
You know, I’m a Shakespeare guy. Many of the Bard’s comedies feature characters who fall in love at first sight and then get married within a day or so as the happy ending to said play. And this is basically a screwball comedy, so I should expect something like this to happen. But the way love is just handed out, as if it really doesn’t matter who Tracy or Mike end up with, it just rubs me in a way that forces me to lose my suspension of disbelief.
And that’s not getting into the Uncle Willie character. He pinches women’s bottoms, and no one seems to see the problem with that. That sort of humor just hasn’t aged well, and I have a hard time believing that he’s so welcome by many of the women he’s pinched and treated as harmless.
Essentially, I look at The Philadelphia Story, though a product of its time, as something that hasn’t aged well, and it really doesn’t treat its female characters right in many respects. Yeah, I don’t think any films from this time did, but most of them don’t end up on “Best of” lists. And while I can often overlook dated material as a product of its time, in this case for some reason, I just can’t.
NEXT: OK, if this entry reflected a film I didn’t care for that the first time I saw it, I can’t claim that for the next one. That’s mostly because I haven’t seen the 1960 Italian satire La Dolce Vita before. I suspect I’ll like it much better than The Philadelphia Story.
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