Tag: Spencer Tracy

Rapid Response: Father of the Bride (1950)

Vincente Minelli’s “Father of the Bride” plays like a This American Life essay. The dialogue’s descriptive, prose-like writing is observantly funny and amusing rather than ha-ha funny, but it finds a twist on the wedding movie genre by viewing it exclusively from one character’s perspective: Dad’s.

Spencer Tracy is probably the only person who could’ve played Stanley T. Banks, so thank goodness Minnelli outright begged him to take the part. His character is often wrong and jumping to conclusions about his daughter’s (Elizabeth Taylor) new boyfriend, but only Tracy could seem appropriately level-headed and convincing. His concerns aren’t rambling and idiotic but show how a father might genuinely feel and act as they quite literally give away the person in their life who means the most to them.

“She’ll always love us, but not in the old way,” Banks says as he watches his daughter stare longingly into the eyes of the handsome Buckley Dunstan (Don Taylor). “She’ll be tossing scraps.” This is Banks’s selfish view, but it’s not completely unwarranted. Her love belongs to someone else now.

We sympathize with him because Minnelli never leaves Banks’s side. Spencer Tracy is in every scene of “Father of the Bride,” and it’s funny because seemingly behind the scenes, the wedding that his family is planning has grown exponentially and all beyond his control. He doesn’t know how it all happened so fast, and neither do we. Minnelli suddenly places us in ungodly lavish sets and lets time and space rush by us in awkward wide shots and long takes. There’s one scene where the camera is placed looking out the front door as Banks stands in the hallway answering the phone. He can’t leave, but scurrying all around us and entering and exiting the frame from all four sides are dozens of movers and wedding planners turning the scene into chaos without any camera movement at all.

There’s a similar sensation when the wedding party rehearses the ceremony for the first time. The moment passes by in a blur. The camera is at a high angle looking down and trying to make sense of this whole fiasco, and the dialogue is all composed of carefully layered voices on the soundtrack that keep us from focusing on just one. The execution is tidy, but the feeling is of a big mess.

Best of all, “Father of the Bride” ends simply without a big moment of family love or a Stanley Kramer-esque speech delivered by Tracy. It’s just a calming conclusion to a long, hectic wedding.

Rapid Response: Adam’s Rib

I can’t think of too many courtroom comedies, so “Adam’s Rib” must be pretty special. It features one of the many pairings of Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn, both of whom are excellent here and have wonderful chemistry with one another.

And such a thing is absolutely necessary for this film to be worth much of anything today. It’s a comedy, but not a screwball or even a rom-com, and it has more amusing moments and character developments rather than big punch lines or sharp, quick dialogue. It is however the little details in George Cukor’s film that turn what could otherwise be a crime procedural into something cute, romantic and funny.

Tracy and Hepburn play two lawyers, Adam and Amanda Barron, both of whom have taken the same case, an attempted murder trial of a woman who shot her cheating husband as he was in the act.

Amanda takes up the cause on her principals of women’s rights and equality, which kind of makes the film dated today with its soapbox pandering and touting of successful women, one of whom can lift Spencer Tracy over her head and do flips.

Thankfully though, Tracy’s character is hardly prejudiced and doesn’t make the issue into more than it is. He also is on wonderful terms with his wife, which is exactly the opposite of how a contemporary rom-com would do this, with characters constantly at each others’ throats to get a laugh and having to redeem their love later.

“Adam’s Rib” also has a wonderful twist in its finale with Tracy proving just how wonderfully likeable of a trickster he can be as an actor. It’s one of those moments that could be a trainwreck if handled any other way than it is, and again something that a modern comedy would jump for in terms of shock value, but here is played safe to hilarious effect.

I’m just starting a kick of comedies after watching “The Odd Couple” a few days ago, which I haven’t written about yet. “The Odd Couple” landed at #17 on the AFI Top 100 Laughs list, and “Adam’s Rib” landed at #22. With that, I’ve now seen 1-23, amongst others, and the next highest I’ve missed is #24, “Born Yesterday.” Ironically enough, it’s also directed by George Cukor, so that should be fun I guess.

Rapid Response: Inherit the Wind

There are few political topics of ethics and morality as relevant today as they were in 1925 as the debate over evolution and Creationism. Stanley Kramer’s “Inherit the Wind,” a film adaptation of a play based on the real life events of the infamous Scopes Monkey Trial, has aged remarkably well because of it.

The film is accurate in every detail except the names of the main players. It tells how a town arrested a teacher in 1925 for teaching evolution, revered a presidential candidate serving as the prosecutor as a prophet and demanded him hung for spreading his atheist teachings and disputing the holy word of God. The Baltimore Sun sent a reporter and a famous lawyer to defend the teacher, and a battle between the right to think and the belief that faith is more holy than thought raged on. Continue reading “Rapid Response: Inherit the Wind”