The war between men and women has some very funny elements in it, and the writing team of Garson Kanin and Ruth Gordon put together a deliciously funny story about what happens when careers overlap and conflict. Working together to create a script on that subject is ironic, and this ends up being one of the first comedies to show how conflict can erupt and how hypocrisies occur when the situations in court end up seeming to be in the home of the prosecuting attorney and the defense attorney.
A deliciously sly opening has put upon wife Judy Holliday following husband Tom Ewell around downtown Manhattan, eventually catching him with his girlfriend, Jean Hagen. She shoots at him indiscriminately, having earlier been looking at the instruction booklet for the gun when she began to shoot random rounds. Assistant district attorney Spencer Tracy is assigned the prosecuting job, and feeling that the wife deserves her chance in court, his wife, Katherine Kepburn, signs on as her attorney. If this isn't cause for issues to occur in a home, then there's no cause for any divorce anywhere.
The funny thing about this film is that I rooted for everybody involved, from the dizzy Holliday to the victim (Ewell) to the mistress (Hagen) and especially to Hepburn and Tracy. There's even a best friend, David Wayne, who seems to be in love with Hepburn himself although certain clues indicate that he's not really interested in anything past writing songs about her. His antics make him seem like a combination of Noel Coward, Lorenz Hart and Cole Porter, and he's quite funny.
Having a male and a female writer and a male and female protagonist, you'd think that there would be a point of view in the battle of the sexes. But what the script really indicates is that both genders are missed up and in spite of being tops in the law field, Tracy and Hepburn play characters who have a lot of baggage.
Funny cameos by veteran character actress Polly Moran and a delightful Hope Emerson (doing backflips in court and lifting Tracy up in a hysterical sequence) add to the fun. This film seems as fresh 70 years after it was released as it did when Tracy and Hepburn were at their height, and it is definitely their best film together. Director George Cukor scores another classic for his resume, one of dozens.
A deliciously sly opening has put upon wife Judy Holliday following husband Tom Ewell around downtown Manhattan, eventually catching him with his girlfriend, Jean Hagen. She shoots at him indiscriminately, having earlier been looking at the instruction booklet for the gun when she began to shoot random rounds. Assistant district attorney Spencer Tracy is assigned the prosecuting job, and feeling that the wife deserves her chance in court, his wife, Katherine Kepburn, signs on as her attorney. If this isn't cause for issues to occur in a home, then there's no cause for any divorce anywhere.
The funny thing about this film is that I rooted for everybody involved, from the dizzy Holliday to the victim (Ewell) to the mistress (Hagen) and especially to Hepburn and Tracy. There's even a best friend, David Wayne, who seems to be in love with Hepburn himself although certain clues indicate that he's not really interested in anything past writing songs about her. His antics make him seem like a combination of Noel Coward, Lorenz Hart and Cole Porter, and he's quite funny.
Having a male and a female writer and a male and female protagonist, you'd think that there would be a point of view in the battle of the sexes. But what the script really indicates is that both genders are missed up and in spite of being tops in the law field, Tracy and Hepburn play characters who have a lot of baggage.
Funny cameos by veteran character actress Polly Moran and a delightful Hope Emerson (doing backflips in court and lifting Tracy up in a hysterical sequence) add to the fun. This film seems as fresh 70 years after it was released as it did when Tracy and Hepburn were at their height, and it is definitely their best film together. Director George Cukor scores another classic for his resume, one of dozens.