Spencer Tracy

  • Pat and Mike (1952)

    Pat and Mike (1952)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, October 2019) I’m on a mission to watch all of the nine Hepburn/Tracy movies, and Pat and Mike is not only the eighth… it’s one of the better ones. It’s certainly one of the nine in which the distinction between actors and roles is most blurred. Written specifically for the pair, Pat and Mike has Katharine Hepburn as a naturally gifted athlete who pairs up with a gruff sports promoter. Sparks fly, a fiancé is ditched and you already know how it’s going to end … but the fun of the film is seeing Hepburn playing Hepburn, relying on her usual clipped dialogue patter and not using stunt doubles for the sport sequences. She actually looks younger here than in some of her late-1940s films, probably helped along by a looser haircut and an active role. Meanwhile, Spencer Tracy is up to his gruff self in trying to keep up with her.  Occasional special effects add to the subjective impact of the comedy. Pat and Mike is not meant to be a deep or surprising film, but rather an occasion to spend some time with two likable stars doing what they do best, and it’s quite successful as such.

  • Malaya (1949)

    Malaya (1949)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, October 2019) Sometimes, casting is enough to make a film interesting. So it is that Malaya, now an obscure 1940s adventure film, is now worth a look simply because it features both Jimmy Stewart and Spencer Tracy in fine form as the protagonists of the story. Set in the early days of WW2, the story is fuelled by the rubber shortages of the time, and the desperate efforts of American officials to build up the national supply. Suddenly, a journalist (Stewart) walks in with a hot tip: a vast deposit of rubber in Malaya, available to the highest bidder. But it’s not an entirely above-board transaction and so a convicted felon (Spencer Tracy, playing a harder character than usual) is asked to help out. Many adventures follow, especially once the urbane Stewart is out of his element in dangerous Japanese-controlled territory. Malaya isn’t a great movie, but it does have two great actors interacting in ways you wouldn’t necessarily predict from their screen persona, and enough eventful scenes to keep things interesting. The atmosphere of a United States newly embroiled in war is interesting in the film’s first act, then it’s off to a Hollywood-studio’s idea of what Malaysia felt at the time, complete with what we’d euphemistically call a folkloric depiction of the local population. It does end with a bang, and perhaps a plot point that we wouldn’t expect from those actors. Malaya won’t necessarily be interesting to anyone who’s not a fan of Stewart, Tracy or near-contemporary WW2 movies, but it’s serviceable enough as it is.

  • State of the Union (1948)

    State of the Union (1948)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2019) The main draw for State of the Union is that it’s another Tracy/Hepburn pairing. There’s a good reason why it’s not usually considered one of the most popular of their films, though: as a Frank Capra political drama featuring both of them as an estranged, nearly divorced couple, it doesn’t have the feel-good comic legacy than many of their movies do—except for Sea of Grass or Keeper of the Flame, which I like but are this close to downbeat.  The chosen tone for most of the film isn’t the kind of stuff that makes for fond memories. If you’re familiar with other Frank Capra movies delving into American politics, you can already see the shape of the plot as a down-to-earth businessman is convinced to run for president by his insanely ambitious girlfriend (Angela Lansbury, in a surprisingly detestable role that prefigures her turn in The Manchurian Candidate). Of course, our hero will see the light of American democracy and send the vultures away. Still, the fun of the movie is getting there, the political aligning with the personal as Spencer Tracy rediscovers his morals and boots the bad girlfriend away in order to reconcile with the virtuous Katharine Hepburn. That’s how it goes, and even knowing it doesn’t tarnish the heartfelt way the film makes his point. American politics circa 2019 aren’t exactly the purest, warmest, incorruptible they’ve ever been—and it’s at times like these that movies such as State of the Union can remind us of some good old-fashioned basic values. Now that we’ve established that political junkies will like the film’s timeless message, what about Tracy/Hepburn shippers? Well, State of the Union is average when it comes to the romance—Hepburn doesn’t come in until the second act, and while the dramatic arc of reconciliation does offer something different from their other movies, it’s not quite the fizzy feel-good material of their highlights. The film does have its comic moments, but it’s far more interested in its dramatic points. As a viewer, its success will depend on whether you like Capra’s straightforward and sentimental paean to democratic ideals. I happen to like it a lot, but I can see the rough spots during which the film gets overtly preachy—even if I happen to agree.

  • Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo (1944)

    Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo (1944)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, June 2019) Considering that the 1942 Doolittle raid over Tokyo was itself mostly a propaganda operation, it does make sense that it would lead to a 1944 propaganda movie about it in Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo. Spencer Tracy is the biggest name in the movie as Doolittle making a few speeches (usually telling his crew that it’s OK if they quit and, in an interesting scene, that they should if they’ll think of themselves as murderers to civilians working in military factories), but much of the film is focused on a small bomber crew as they undergo training, deployment, action and egress to safety. Despite the obvious propagandist value of the film, Dalton Trumbo’s script is a well-constructed journey with likable characters as they go from home to danger and back. It also soft-pedals demonization of the enemy, portraying it as a justifiable response to past slights rather than killing for killing’s sake. (That’s not quite the historical record, but compare that attitude with other 1940s war movies that delight in mass murder and you’ll see the difference.)  As a result, Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo has aged better than many films of the era—it’s surprisingly entertaining even today, and some great Oscar-winning special effects do help it stay even more impressive with time.

  • Captains Courageous (1937)

    Captains Courageous (1937)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2019) It’s amazing to see what earlier era considered perfectly acceptable entertainment for kids. 1937’s Captain Courageous, for instance, adapted an 1897 Rudyard Kipling novel and refashioned it as a coming-of-age story for a spoiled rich boy swept overboard and rescued by fishermen, who teach him much about fishing and life. Considering that it’s a story that includes the gruesome death of a main character by sagittal bisection, well, I’m not going to begrudge the current crop of kids’ films. Still, the result can be surprisingly enjoyable. Freddie Bartholomew turns in a good performance as the boy, with an endearing turn by curly-haired Spencer Tracy, and supporting roles for both Lionel Barrymore and Mickey Rooney. Tracy has the best role here, as a loquacious Portuguese fisherman who helps the initially detestable boy protagonist become a better person. One thing that holds up surprisingly well is the depiction of fishermen working the Grand Banks of Newfoundland—the footage of real fishermen at sea (in sailboats!) is a terrific time capsule, and the integration of water-tank footage with rear-projection special effects is often better than you’d expect. Despite a drawn-out ending, Captain Courageous does wrap up in a satisfying fashion, capping off a film that still works well today, albeit to an older audience.

  • The Sea of Grass (1947)

    The Sea of Grass (1947)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, March 2019) As someone who’s spent too much time getting interested in Katharine Hepburn’s career (wait, is that even possible?) the 1940s were an interesting decade for her, going from the career renewal of being a young romantic interest in The Philadelphia Story to the more mature role in Adam’s Rib. In those ten years, she met Spencer Tracy, her hair went shorter, her roles became more complex and she managed the transition from girlish ingenue to matronly powerhouse. This transformation is very much at work in The Sea of Grass, along with a striking odd note in her screen persona: As the story heads west for another tale of homesteaders against cattle ranchers, we also get one of the very few departures from Hepburn’s very urban screen persona—Aside from Rooster Cogburn, I can’t recall another western of hers, which is almost statistically improbable considering that she lived through the rise and death of westerns as a dominant film genre. Anyway—here she finds herself on the frontier along with Spencer Tracy (another largely urban type, albeit to a lesser extent) in a multi-generational epic drama of colonization of the grassy plains. (This being said, this is one of the few westerns in which the importance of big cities is recognized and exploited.)  The time skips, when they first take place, are a bit startling and feature far more dramatic twists and turns than you’d expect from a story with a shorter time span. On the other hand, this adaptation from a hefty novel does feel long and the melodramatic turns of the narrative are not necessarily what we now associate with a Hepburn/Tracy film. Ah well—if you’re forewarned that the film lasts 131 minutes and there’s a lot of heartbreak on the way to a milder conclusion, then it may be successful—as long as you’re in the mood for a low-violence, high-melodrama western. The really funny thing, in retrospect, is that while The Sea of Grass is not usually ranked very highly on the list of the nine Hepburn/Tracy films, it was at the time the highest-grossing of them.

  • Inherit the Wind (1960)

    Inherit the Wind (1960)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, March 2019) By 1960, director Stanley Kramer was hitting his prime era as a socially conscious filmmaker, tackling topics that studios were reluctant to feature. Inherit the Wind is about the Scopes Trial of 1925, in which attorney Clarence Darrow famously argued in favour of teaching evolution in schools. The text is enhanced by a subtext that mulls over McCarthyism, bringing additional interest to the result. The Hillsboro evolution trial subject matter is compelling enough, but I found myself unexpectedly captivated by the acting talent on display in the movie. The headliner is Spencer Tracy, of course, as he plays Darrow and brings his usual unassuming strength to the role. There’s also one great late-career role for Fredric March as the prosecuting lawyer. But my happy surprise was to see Gene Kelly playing a cynical newspaper reporter, very far from his musical roles but compelling from beginning to end thanks to some incredible dialogue. (A quote for the ages: “I do hateful things for which people love me, and I do loveable things for which they hate me. I’m admired for my detestability. (…) I may be rancid butter, but I’m on your side of the bread.”) The humour is quite biting. It helps that the script takes the time to lay the groundwork in describing life in a small town (“Old Time Religion” is used as a musical leitmotif), right before the media circus begins. Inherit the Wind remains of topical relevance today: on the basic issue of evolution in school, it often looks as if some areas of the United States have barely advanced in a century, and the everlasting debate between free-thinking and authoritarian rule remains at the root of quite a few political issues even right now. Inherit the Wind’s technical quality translates into something still immediately accessible. It’s sobering to think that the exact same film would be just as controversial today—I can already imagine a dozen disingenuous columns arguing that movies like this one are why the red states keep voting against their own self-interest.

  • Desk Set (1957)

    Desk Set (1957)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, February 2019) As an Information Technology professional, I have a bigger interest than most in the place of computers in movies, and Desk Set manages to bring together that interest with another one—seeing Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn playing off each other in a romantic comedy. Set at the dawn of corporate IT, this film takes the burgeoning anxieties of the era and recasts them as fuel for a workplace comedy with a big dose of romance. As the story begins, Hepburn is the manager of a research library for a TV network—her staff can answer any question anyone could have. But in walks Tracy as a mysterious eccentric eventually revealed to be an “efficiency expert”—tasked with bringing a computer in the building to complement the work of the research staff. This being a comedy from the early days of computing, madness ensues. In one of Desk Set’s funniest scenes, the quasi-magical computer ends up firing everyone in the building, something swiftly ignored as the staff learns to get along with their computerized assistant. Said computer ends up taking over most of the set and the plot, leading to a high-energy finale. In the meantime, we do get some good romantic sparring between the whip-smart Hepburn and the ever-affable Tracy. It’s not a great movie, nor is it a great romance, but it does work well enough as a comedy. The dialogue is nice, and the increasing absurdity of the film does work in its favour as it hits its finale. The romantic plot is never surprising, but the bits and pieces along the way are fun. This is later-day Tracy/Hepburn (she wears her gray hair consistently pinned back), but the first of their movies shot in colour. Still, Desk Set is fun and fun is what it aims for. Contemporary IT professionals should get quite a kick out of the mid-1950s look at the potential and perils of computers in the workplace.

  • San Francisco (1936)

    San Francisco (1936)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, February 2019) One of my working hypotheses in my Grand Unified Theory of Hollywood is that everything was invented during the 1930s, and we’ve been running variations on a theme ever since. San Francisco is another validation of that statement, as it credibly sets up the template that later disaster movies would follow closely. Set during the 1906 earthquake, San Francisco features no less than Clark Gable as an atheistic saloon owner and gambler. Then popular singer Jeanette MacDonald is the love interest, while Spencer Tracy has an early role as a Catholic priest fit to act as the protagonist’s conscience. Much of the early film is spent showcasing the city as it existed at the turn of the century and setting up the dramatic conflicts that will be settled definitively by the earthquake. For modern viewers, there’s also another kind of suspense: How, exactly, are the filmmakers going to portray the impending disaster on-screen? Is it going to look effective to our modern CGI-jaded eyes? That question is answered convincingly two thirds of the way through with an utterly thrilling sequence in which real-world sets are split apart. It’s a long and still-impressive moment in the movie as characters scream, building crumble and even the era’s limitations in special effects technology can’t quite diminish the importance of the moment. Once the disaster is over, it’s no surprise if our atheistic character had found God and his love interest, affirming San Francisco’s Phoenix-like endurance. The slightly historical nature of the film, looking backwards twenty years, actually gives it an interesting weight that the speculative disaster films of the 1970s can’t quite match. While primitive by today’s SFX standards, I found San Francisco surprisingly enjoyable when it gets on with the show, and prescient as to how it creates a template for an entire subgenre to follow.

  • It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World (1963)

    It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World (1963)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On TV, January 2019) The 1960s were a strange time for movies, with studios chasing epic films in a decades-long fight to convince TV viewers to make the trip to theatres. It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World is special in that it (along with The Great Race) was a rare attempt to make an epic comedy rather than rely on oh-so-very-serious biblical or historical source material. The result is, indeed a spectacle: As a few strangers hear a dying thief give them the location of a hidden treasure, the rest of the film is a madcap, multi-character chase through the southwestern United States in an attempt to get to the treasure before everyone else. The ensemble cast is a collection of early 1960s comedy stars, even though most of them are now unfamiliar to contemporary audiences. Still, what has not gone out of style is the succession of action set-pieces, impressive stunt work, breakneck editing and far-fetched comic situations in which the characters find themselves. Where else can you witness a plane flying (for real!) through a billboard; a man destroying a service station; or characters stuck on an out-of-control fireman ladder? It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World is admittedly very long—at nearly three hours (with half an hour cut from the first showings!), it would be a test of anyone’s patience, except that the laughs and the fast pacing do keep things hopping quickly: director Stanley Kramer may not have the deftest touch with comedy and specifically verbal comedy, but the result speaks for itself. While the film is easy to like, there are a few things that hold it back from unconditional love—namely, that the point of the film is a greedy chase, and so nearly every character (even the one played by the normally likable Spencer Tracy) eventually succumbs to pure old-fashioned backstabbing greed. The ending does the most of what it can with the cards it’s given, but there’s still an absence of a pure happy ending for anyone that stings a bit. Still, It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World is a classic for a reason, and its sheer lengths and density of comic set-pieces make it a decent prospect for a rewatch.

  • Adam’s Rib (1949)

    Adam’s Rib (1949)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On DVD, June 2018) Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn are back on-screen as a warring couple in Adam’s Rib: As a prosecutor (Tracy) takes on an attempted murder case set against a love triangle, his wife (Hepburn) takes on the case for the woman accused of trying to kill her husband while he was having what looks like an affair. Courtroom hijinks ensue, followed by further fireworks at home when pillow talk becomes legal talk. Like many screwball comedies of the time, Adam’s Rib does depend on a somewhat caricatured premise—not only that a wife would deliberately take on a case opposite her husband without having some serious conflict-of-interest professional issues, but that a judge would allow circus-like antics in his courtroom. The point of the film, obviously, is to see Tracy and Hepburn play off each other, and provide a satisfying climax right after being brought to the brink of divorce. It has certainly aged, but it’s still generally effective largely thanks to the lead actors. Hepburn is fantastic, and you can see that her role in the film is on the inflection point that brought her from floppy-haired ingénue roles to the matriarchal characters that would dominate the rest of her career. Tracy is less flashy but no less effective—the ending would have flopped with countless other actors, but he manages to sell it. Together, in this sixth film starring both of them, they have fantastic timing—so much so that at time, director George Cukor simply records their banter without moving the camera or cutting to different angles. David Wayne does shine in a small role with a few very funny moments. While some moments of the film don’t play particularly well today, the charm of the production generally overcomes those weaker moments—and the happy ending does redeem an increasingly darker third act. As a romantic comedy, Adam’s Rib is blunter than what we’re used to, but still remarkable in its own way.

  • Woman of the Year (1942)

    Woman of the Year (1942)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On DVD, June 2018) There’s a particular pleasure in seeing Katharine Hepburn take on a role described as a superwoman, and there are no credibility issues in seeing her incarnate a 1940s polyglot media superstar, hobnobbing with the ruling elite and wielding a position of considerable influence thanks to her newspaper column. It’s also not so much of a stretch to see Spencer Tracy as a likable everyday man working as a sports columnist, proudly speaking for the masses. Once you’ve got those two characters well-defined, the rest of the film goes by quickly: Of course, they meet, fall in love and then have to deal with their own issues. While Woman of the Year must have been fairly progressive for its time, parts of the movie have not aged well at all. For all of her wonderful introduction, Hepburn’s character is badly treated by much of the screenplay: Unable to actually engage with the idea of a strong powerful woman, the film is often reduced to making fun of a caricature she’s meant to represent. There’s an awful subplot about adopting a child that leads to complications that no decent human being would ever cause. The ending—despite a few chuckles—is quite clearly an attempt to bring her down to a relatable level for much of the audience through something that has since become an unbearable cliché: the ultra-competent woman who can’t cook. There are two things behind the scenes of the film that do soften up its unpleasant edge: For one thing, the film was written almost to order for Hepburn, who contributed to the script—except for the ending, rewritten and reshot against Hepburn’s wishes when test audiences balked. Today’s test audiences would almost certainly prefer the far more egalitarian original ending, which is described on the film’s Wikipedia page. The other thing to keep in mind is that this is the film where Hepburn met and began a decades-long relationship with Tracy (not to mention nine other movies together, all the way to 1967’s Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner). Despite its missteps, Woman of the Year remains relatively funny, features Hepburn at her best and clearly shows the chemistry between the two leads. Recommended with a few strong warnings attached.

  • Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1941)

    Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1941)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2018) From our twenty-first century perspective, we routinely complain about remakes … but the truth is that the early decades of cinema were just as rife with movies being remade. Of course, back then they did have better excuses, as the state of the art in moviemaking kept progressing at a pace that would astound us today. Take the leap between the 1920 and 1941 versions of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde: One of them silent, crude and garish while the latter one being more nuanced and controlled. Spencer Tracy delivers a truly good performance in both eponymous roles, relying on sheer acting (and hairstyling, and makeup) to distinguish between the two characters. The direction is more ambitious, the story a bit more sophisticated, the portrayal of evil not quite as comically quaint as in the previous film. As a result, the 1941 version can be watched today with far fewer obstacles between the film and the viewer—sure, the colour is missing … but not much more. Where the 1941 version suffers a bit, especially when watched as a double-feature with the 1920 version, is that it has fewer surprises to offer in telling the same story. In a way, that frees the viewer to appreciate the execution and Tracy’s more impressive performance largely bereft of prosthetics.

  • Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (1967)

    Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (1967)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, January 2018) It’s not a failure if some social-issue films don’t work as well now than at the time of their release—sometimes, the world moves in the direction advocated, and as a result the film looks as if it’s been outpaced by the future. So it is that the central conceit of Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (a white girl bringing back a black fiancé home for her parents’ approval) doesn’t quite have the same charge fifty years later. And that’s quite all right. This being said, let’s not take this for a condemnation of the work from director Stanley Kramer, or by Spencer Tracy, Sidney Poitier, and Katharine Hepburn. After all, the film finished shooting six months before Loving v. Virginia actually legalized interracial marriages across the United States. But it does feel a bit stuffy, all the way to a conclusion that boils down to an intensely paternalistic “Father has thought about it and will let you crazy kids do whatever you want” conclusion. It’s not quite fair to dismiss the film in such a way (and indeed, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner’s ending gets far more potent once you read about how Spencer Tracy died two weeks after shooting his final scene and final film with long-time co-star Katharine Hepburn) but it is definitely a reflection of its time, and time has moved on.

    (Second Viewing, On Cable TV, October 2018) As I suspected, revisiting Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner after watching a handful of Spencer Tracy/Katharine Hepburn movies has significantly improved my opinion of the film. This was a partial re-watch, focusing on the scenes featuring Tracy and Hepburn, and it affirms that Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner is a terrific victory lap for Tracy, whose kindly-father persona here acts as a capstone to a career that saw numerous pairings with Hepburn at various moments in their careers. It’s easy to imagine a shared backstory for their characters that includes bits and pieces of Woman of the Year or Adam’s Rib, and that’s when context can become crucial in seeing what the fuss is about a particular movie. If you de-emphasize the racial message and focus on the Hepburn/Spencer couple, this film becomes a satisfying epilogue to a shared on-screen career, well worth watching if you’re familiar with the rest of the Hepburn/Tracy filmography.