The Philadelphia Story
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Features
• Black & White
• Closed-captioned
• Dolby
• DVD-Video
• NTSC
In Theaters : 01 December, 1940
DVD Release : 02 May, 2000 |
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The Philadelphia Story description
Re-creating the role she originated in Philip Barry's wickedly witty Broadway play, Katharine Hepburn stars as the spoiled and snobby socialite Tracy Lord in this sparkling 1940 screen adaptation of The Philadelphia Story, one of the great romantic comedies from the golden age of MGM studios. Applying her impossibly high ideals to everyone but herself, Tracy is about to marry a stuffy executive when her congenial ex-husband (Cary Grant), arrives to protect his former father-in-law from a potentially scandalous tabloid exposé. In an Oscar-winning role, James Stewart is the scandal reporter who falls for Tracy as her wedding day arrives, throwing her into a dizzying state of premarital jitters. Who will join Tracy at the altar? Snappy dialogue flows like sparkling wine under the sophisticated direction of George Cukor in this film that turned the tide of Hepburn's career from "box-office poison" to glamorous Hollywood star. --Jeff Shannon |
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The Philadelphia Story Customer Reviews
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♥♥♥♥♥
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Tremendous Aplomb
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No need to chronicle the miracle that this vehicle wrought in Kate Hepburn's career, sufficing to say that Howard Hughes bought the rights for her and she took it from success on Broadway to Hollywood gold with tremendous aplomb. She insisted on control of director (Cukor) and co-stars (Grant and Stewart) and her gambit paid big dividends. The rest is movie magic.
Hepburn portrays a Main Line divorcee on the eve of Wedding Number Two. Grant is Husband Number One and Stewart is the initially-under-cover reporter there to chronicle An Intimate Day with a Society Bride' for "Spy" magazine. Hepburn's character is the one to watch as she grows from a distant goddess to a flesh and blood woman, but it is fair to say that one and all undergo some pretty rooty tooty transformations before The End.
Marvelous moments abound--it is playwright Philip Barry's masterpiece, after all. Favorites...
Hepburn and Virginia Weidler's send up of the Main Line drawl, complete with the lockjaw pose is dead on--people in Bryn Mawr and Chester County Horse Country still talk like that if you can believe it.
Droll moments include the witticisms about South Bend (Hepburn says vaguely, "It sounds like dancing, doesn't it?), about Duluth (Hepburn again: Duluth. That must be a lovely spot. It's west of here, isn't it?), of Stewart's friends ("Of whom you have many, I'm sure...").
And Weidler's over the top rendition of "Lydia, the Tattooed Lady".
The witty repartee holds throughout the film, and at one point, perhaps the key moment in the film, Barry gives Hepburn's character Tracy Lord the best line in this or any film, "The time to make up one's mind about someone is (pause) never."
The ending is one of the three or four ideal wedding endings in film, along with "The Graduate", "It Happened One Night" and "Four Weddings and a Funeral".
P. S. The play was remade as the musical "High Society" with Bing, Blue Eyes and soon-to-be Princess Grace, which is not half bad. But "The Philadelphia Story" is better, and among the best 20 films of all time.
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The Philadelphia Story dvd movie.