The Philadelphia Story
I am a little bit at a loss here. This is the strangest screwball comedy I have seen, or rather, it’s strange apart from the fact that it is a screwball comedy. So, granted, the protagonist has feelings for two men at the same time, and then there also is the fiance but he doesn’t quite count because, well, it’s pretty obvious she had no feelings for that guy whatsoever. But then there is this issue of morals – it is lovely and all that everybody (father, sister, friends) approves of her final decision to go for her feelings and not for some strange sense of morals, but the process of getting there was utterly strange. I don’t quite get this scene in which her father reproaches to her that her failure to love and to understand human weakness made him have an affair with a young dancer. Certainly we all should be a little tolerant, but why in the world would anybody want to tolerate an old lecherous man who goes after young girls so he can feel youth himself? That’s not weak, that’s despicable. The same principle goes through the whole film – Hepburn’s character is depressed because she does not feel human and in one of those other odd scenes, she apologizes to her father for not being “a disappointment”.
Ignoring the oddities of the film, I think I was quite delighted by Katharine Hepburn’s performance, who is not only as perfect together with Cary Grant as she has always been but even has some chemistry with James Stewart too – I think this made their love triangle quite lovely. Just like the brother in “Holiday”, my favorite characters were the little precocious sister and Liz Imbrie; her hair looked a little odd but her sarcastic tongue was an enhancement to every scene she was in. The only thing I thought was sad was that I mostly watched “The Philadelphia Story” because of Cary Grant and totally thought his role was too little! (In comparison to his other films at least.)
If I had a boat one day, I’d call it “True Love”. It’s too bad I don’t really like boats. Maybe an airplane, or a cat. Perhaps I expect too much from screwball comedies these days, but for one of its famous examples, “The Philadelphia Story” was not much more than good. Maybe on day I shall rewatch it.