The Philadelphia Story Is A Total Delight, Especially In Its Excellent Ending

I'm officially head over heels for Katharine Hepburn as an actor. There's so much to love about Hepburn as a performer, but perhaps best of all about her is her assured nature. Whether she's depicting her character in a sorrowful mood or making it clear that her character feels radiant, Hepburn conveys a self-possessed quality in her performances that's truly thrilling to watch. Getting to watch her excel in a screwball comedy like Bringing Up Baby was already such a treat and her work in The Philadelphia Story is similarly top-notch stuff. Her work here is truly exceptional on its own merits while watching her rub shoulders with the likes of Jimmy Stewart and Cary Grant adds another layer of delightfulness to the proceedings.


In director George Cukor's The Philadelphia Story, Katharine Hepburn plays Tracy Samantha Lord, a wealthy lady living a life of luxury in one of the most prolific families of Philadelphia. She's due to be married off in a day's time, but unbeknownst to her, this highly personal event is being eyeballed an opportunity for personal gain by outside parties. Such outside parties include ex-boyfriend C.K. Dexter Haven (Cary Grant) while a reporter and a photographer, Mike Connor (Jimmy Stewart) and Elizabeth Imbrie (Ruth Hussey) respectively, are sent by a local publication to cover the wedding. Former flames and strangers alike are descending on the wedding and these unexpected presences will soon become essential figures in Tracy's unexpected quest to re-evaluate who she is as a person.

While Tracy Samantha Lord is definitely our lead character in The Philadelphia Story, she's far from the only individual in the story to prove to be important nor have their own judgment to pass on what kind of big events transpire within the film. One of the best aspects of The Philadelphia Story becomes evident early on as the distinct perspectives of Mike Connor and Dexter Haven become crystal clear. Watching said perspectives bounce off one another in the course of the story itself proves to be highly fun, especially since the plot refuses to embrace predictability in either character arcs or certain plot points.

One never really knows where Tracy is going to go next in her evolution as a character, nor do aspects of characters like Mike Connor's disdain for the wealthy end up factoring into the plot exactly like one might imagine. This extends to a climatic wedding where I truly had no idea what was going to happen next, much to my own delight. You also get allegiances between certain characters that end up providing a jolt of surprise to the proceedings while a similar level of playful unpredictability permeates the overall storytelling at large. Screenwriter Donald Odgen Stiers has so much fun with taking these characters and spinning them around and around in unbridled messes of their own design, making the film evocative of screwball comedies at certain points, especially in an early scene where Tracy and her sister act like caricatures of ultra-snooty wealthy people to a bewildered Mike and Elizabeth.

The sublime writing delivers a robust supply of comedy as well with much of this humor being dialogue-oriented in a way that allows Donald Odgen Stiers to show off his knack for penning memorable pieces of back-and-forth dialogue. The aforementioned distinct personalities of the individual characters shine through in these conversations to a degree that generates both further insights into who they are as people and also simply provides plenty of comedy in seeing these folks collide into one another on a verbal level. While the writing from Odgen Stiers as well as the direction of George Cukor are key ingredients for why The Philadelphia Story ends up being so funny, I'd actually say the actors themselves may be the biggest reason for why this film is just so thoroughly entertaining from start to finish.

The Philadelphia Story is certainly an actor showcase.for its lead players, especially Katherine Hepburn, whose aforementioned quality of self-assuredness shines through in her lead role here. While a very interesting dramatic character arc involving Tracy wanting to be treated like a human being by her loved ones is a core component of the character that Hepburn handles with engaging grace, it's certainly the comedy where she leaves an impression in one's mind. Watching Hepburn play an intoxicated version of her character that's adamant that Mike does not stop crooning Judy Garland tunes alone had me in stitches and there's plenty of other wonderful comedic moments involving her part that Hepburn excels in executing.

It's also a whole lot of fun to see Jimmy Stewart play a more no-nonsense character whose got an inherent distrust of the wealthy, it's a departure from the warm n' fuzzy individuals Stewart typically played in this era and his underappreciated range as an actor is evident in how well he handles the role. Cary Grant's electric chemistry with Hepburn in Bringing Up Baby is alive and well here as the two have an effortless rapport even when they hate each other's guts that keeps one's eyeballs stuck to the screen. Nearly eighty years after its release, The Philadelphia Story is considered one of the all-time great romantic comedies and considering just many wonderful hilarious performances it contains, it's not hard to see why this utterly delightful motion picture has earned that distinction and numerous other accolades.