Classic Movie Review: The Philadelphia Story(1940) #AtoZChallenge

Welcome to the Panorama of the Mountains Blogging A to Z Challenge. This year I’m watching and reviewing movies from A-to-Z based on my ongoing Classic Movie Project. Most movies will be featured on one or more of three lists: AFI’s 100 Years…100 Movies (USA), The Sight & Sound Greatest Films of All Time (UK), and Cahiers du Cinéma Greatest Films of All Time (France). In some cases, I will be very creative in assigning a Classic Movie to a letter of the alphabet, and in a few cases the movie I watch will not be Classic Movies at all.

There is not a single movie I want to watch that starts with the letter “Q” so I’m just doing another “P” movie.  Of course, Philadelphia is “the Quaker City,” so there is your Q content if you need it.

Title: The Philadelphia Story
Release Date: December 26, 1940
Director: George Cukor
Production Company: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Summary/Review:

Cary Grant + Katharine Hepburn + James Stewart + lots of alcohol + witty repartee seems a perfect recipe for comedy gold.  The story is that mainline Philadelphia socialite Tracy Lord (Hepburn) has divorced C.K. Dexter Haven (Grant) and now plans to marry the new money George Kittredge (John Howard).  On the eve of the wedding Dexter returns with a reporter, Mike Connor (James Stewart) and a photographer Elizabeth Imbrie (Ruth Hussey) who – somewhat reluctantly – are there to cover the high society wedding.

All of this is mainly an excuse to get some of the best actors of all-time together for the aforementioned drinking and repartee.  But the plot doesn’t quite go where you think it might go either.  Well, the ending is totally predictable, but the winding path it takes to get their is not.  As an added bonus there are many scenes stolen by Virginia Weidler as Tracy’s little sister Dinah.

This is another movie that was a favorite of mine in my younger years that I failed to revisit for the past couple of decades.  I’m going to say that it’s a little bit less good than I remember.  There are a few too many domestic abuse jokes for my taste.  And there are some dead spots, especially early on in the film.  But put that aside, because even if this film was perfect in memory it is still an all-time classic in its less-than-perfect state.

Rating: ****