NFR Project: 'Adam's Rib' (1949)

 

NFR Project: “Adam’s Rib”

Dir: George Cukor

Scr: Ruth Gordon, Garson Kanin

Pho: George J. Folsey

Ed: George Boemler

Premiere: Nov. 18, 1949

101 min.

When last we saw Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn on film together in this series, it was in their first collaboration, Woman of the Year (1942). Over the next eight years, they made seven more pictures together. Their chemistry was perfect – he, the wry average guy, her the rapid-fire overachiever.

This onscreen relationship was accompanied by an offscreen relationship, one that was deeply loving. Tracy, a Catholic, wouldn’t divorce his wife, so he and Hepburn lived a life together as much as they could, maintaining separate residences and keeping their relationship an ill-kept secret. Tracy also struggled with his mental health and with alcohol. It was not all peaches and cream.

Still, what made them compatible offscreen manifests itself in their films together. Each one had a characteristic persona, and these two types played off each other with grace and wit. Here in Adam’s Rib, their verbal exchanges chase one another across the room, and frequently dissolve into talking OVER each other, a comic dividend.

This is their second film together under the direction of George Cukor, and the first comedy essayed by the three of them. Cukor’s urbane, understated style lets the actors act their way through a philosophical debate crossed with a slapstick bedroom comedy. Cukor gazes on contentedly as a parade of distinctive character actors crowd the screen carrying on the nonsense in the background. Cukor and Hepburn wound up making 10 films together over a span of 50 years.

The extremely sharp script by Ruth Gordon and Garson Kanin casts them as lawyers. He, Adam, an assistant district attorney; she, wife Amanda, an attorney for the defense. Their New York apartment is comfortably grand; they bought a farm upstate as well. They are both extremely good at what they do.

The crux of the plot is this: a daffy housewife (Judy Holliday in a career-making performance) trails her cheating husband (the great Tom Ewell) to the apartment of his girlfriend (a young Jean Hagen). She pulls out a revolver, emptying it blindly. She wounds her husband. She is arrested of course.

However, Amanda asserts that, if the sexual roles were reversed, the shooting would be seen as justified, a defense of the home. She represents the housewife. Unfortunately, Adam is the prosecutor assigned to the case. The two must negotiate their relationship away from the court, just as they indulge in heated debate within it. As the trial progresses, Amanda goes to extreme lengths to bolster her client’s case; Adam, riled up and outraged, chuffs along steadily.

In the end, Amanda wins the case – but Adam moves out. Beset romantically by their neighbor, songwriter Kip (David Wayne), Amanda nearly falters when Adam appears, gun in hand. Amanda shields the diminutive Kip. “You have no right!” she exclaims. His point is proven. Adam puts the gun in his mouth – and bites it. “Itth licowice,” he explains. The three then do battle.

A divorce seems inevitable. The two meet at their tax accountant’s office. They begin to reminisce, Adam cries. Amanda relents. They go up to the farm. Adam announces that he is the Republican candidate for County Court Judge and then demonstrates that he can cry on command. They are together again.

It’s lovely late screwball comedy, wherein everyone is intelligent and reasonable; their senses of honor and propriety are in opposition, not their feeling selves. So the personal and the professional get mixed up until the woman wins and the roles reverse themselves.

Tracy takes (almost) everything with a skeptical glint of humor. Hepburn dashes madly about him, dynamic and stunningly articulate. Like Nick and Nora Charles in the Thin Man movies, Adam and Amanda embody the ideal of two uniquely matched people filling a need in each other’s lives, beyond the concept of winning and losing. They communicated. They got along well. We felt we knew them. That’s a pretty stellar achievement.

The NFR is one writer’s attempt to review all the films listed in the National Film Registry in chronological order. Next time: All the King’s Men.