The Philadelphia Story is in a class of its own. If you tried to construct a canon of Hollywood high comedy of manners, it might be the only member. Lubitsch is satirical about that genre to the point of camp. There are several British films that fit the category but American producers insisted that there always be some important characters with vaudeville or midwestern sensibilities. Even the snazzy Astaire-Rogers tails-and-gowns fancies involved some American con-job imposture as The Count and Countess of Indiana punctured the pretensions of the social elites. (Holiday, another Hepburn-Cukor vehicle, may fit the category, and maybe the Gable-Loy-Harlow Wife vs. Secretary does. too.) The uniqueness of The Philadelphia Story, it seems to me, is that it transferred an elegant, literary stage play so well to the screen. This is George Cukor’s comic masterpiece. Katherine Hepburn’s thespian ego is contained by having so many accomplished screen actors around her. The pace is a lot faster than it would be on stage, but it works because we can see the actors’ expressions and mouths up close. But for me the key to the film’s success — and to its physical beauty — is the lighting. Cukor is routinely referred to as woman’s director. He apparently listened to his leading female stars, didn’t try to intimidate them or get them into bed — but I think most of all, they appreciated that he lit them in ways that made them seem luminous. In Philadelphia Story, the whole world of the Philadelphia mainline and everyone in it appears to glow. (If you want to see the range of Cukor’s lighting brilliance, check out the opposite end of the spectrum, Gaslight; Joseph Ruttenberg was the cinematographer for both films.)
The plot is somewhat Shakespearean, a Much Ado without a villain or a fool, a Taming of the Shrew without a nasty shrew-tamer, a Midsummer Night’s Dream without a Puck. There’s maybe even more Molière — aristocratic society is strengthened by revealing its sexual hypocrisy and affirming tolerance. On stage I imagine it comes off as somewhat effete — the Lords playing out a modern fantasy of how the Moon Goddess is freed from her unproductive chastity through the Magic Elixir of Champagne. On screen it works because the world around them appears magically brilliant.
Even when there’s a trace of low farce — Dinah flounces to the piano to play Groucho’s “Lydia, the Tattooed Lady” — it’s just to show that even clowning is a tool of the upper class.
Hepburn’s Tracy is the visual center. The play was written for her and she took control of it all the way from Broadway to Hollywood. But the casting of Cary Grant and Jimmy Stewart is important not just because of their urbane comic roles pulling Tracy to emotional extremes (angry resentment toward Dexter, pie-faced eroticism with Macauley), but because their acting styles are restrained enough to give depth to the alcohol theme. The elixir can free the feelings but it can also create what Dexter calls a “great thirst.” Philadelphia Story is not only what the philosopher Stanley Cavell terms a comedy of re-marriage, it’s also a comedy of rehab. (I suspect a lot of folks who paid to see the play on the New York stage had some experience with the elixir, the drug of choice in those days.)
My favorite scene in the film is Tracy and Macauley’s drunken flirtation under the moonlight. The scene is beautifully lit, and Hepburn and Stewart look gorgeous. But the key is that these beautiful bodies are enjoying an ecstasy of language.
The morning after. Recognition is a bitch.
A happy mixture of beautiful people and beautiful minds. Hollywood usually got the first part right, but the second… not so much.