Please don't spend money on this.

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

Worth seeing just to witness how winsome it is.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

This movie is shocking from it's first few minutes. It presents politics as being as despicable, bitter, dirty and calculating as it is today. It's astonishing that in 1948, politics could be portrayed much more honestly than any movie or news outlet would even attempt today. Oddly, the plot involves the disclosure of a candidate as a big phony who's sold the country to power-brokers and big industry; not for his sexual entanglement with a woman who isn't his wife. Is this a thematic choice for the movie, or the oft-repeated rubric that this behavior was known before Kennedy, but held secret by a complicit press. Only Capra's ridiculous imposition of his cherished immigrant patriotism (which has nothing to do with the hateful foreground action) mucks things up. The political gamesmanship is NOT presented lightly or for comic value. And that part of the story (the much better part) whole-heartedly resists the preachy jingoism that Capra tries to paste on it.Hepburn is the estranged wife of Tracy. We meet her, only after Tracy's lady-friend has had a lengthy, forceful impact on the film. Lansbury plays a pathetic, scheming politicians daughter almost as evil and hateful as she is in Manchurian Candidate. It is not the usual Tracy/Hepburn vehicle. Capra is in John Doe mode and tries to sell a rotten ending that's just so much sentimental pap. He could never resolve his more complicated scripts. Thankfully his signature cuteness has been relaxed almost to non-existence. It's shot better than most Capra movies, and the DVD transfer is unbelievably crisp. This would make a very intelligent double-feature with "All the Kings Men" about Huey Long.

This somewhat forgotten 1948 dramedy is not the undiscovered gem of the Tracy-Hepburn pairings, but the 2006 DVD provides an opportunity to take a look at the political corruption running rampant in Washington at the time, clearly as prescient now as it was relevant then. The subject is well suited to film-making legend Frank Capra, who made the classic "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" a decade earlier and echoes a similar theme of an honest man surrounded by those who tear at his ethics. Adapted by Anthony Veiller and Myles Connolly from a play by Russel Crouse and Howard Lindsay, the plot centers on Grant Matthews, a pulled-from-his-bootstraps industrialist who has not lost touch with the common folks, a quality seized upon by Machiavellian newspaper publisher Kay Thorndyke, who uses her considerable media power to shape him into a viable candidate for the presidency.Thorndyke also happens to be Matthews' lover, even though he is still married to stoic, disillusioned Mary, his estranged wife who has remained in the marriage not only for the sake of their two children but also in the dimming hope that he will come back to her. Initially, Matthews balks at the idea of becoming President, but he recognizes an ambition to improve the country. At the same time, Thorndyke and her cohort, proto-Karl Rove political adviser Jim Conover convince him to make compromising speeches to win the votes of powerful lobbies. If you know Capra films, you know how it will all turn out. The main problem I had with the film is the pacing and the relative inconsistency in tone. Much of the time, it feels truncated with little transition between scenes, and farcical moments are mixed with more serious ones in ways that make the film feel emotionally askew at times.The performances can't be faulted. Spencer Tracy is well cast as the plainspoken Matthews, while Katharine Hepburn lends her much-needed verve and snap to the cautiously hopeful Mary. All of 22 but looking far more commanding and mature, Angela Lansbury almost steals the picture as Kay, even though her character is so venal and humorless that it is hard not to hiss when she's on screen, especially with her dragon-lady cigarette holder. It's easy to see the future Mrs. Iselin in John Frankenheimer's "The Manchurian Candidate". Adolphe Menjou plays Conover in his typical blowhard manner, while Van Johnson is unctuous in a likable sort of way as reporter Spike McManus. Capra lays out his familiar flag-waving cornpone thickly here, sometimes quite effectively, but the attempts at slapstick humor are pretty laborious. This remains an interesting curio in his canon. The DVD provides a fairly clean print but has absolutely no extras, not even chapter stops.

What Frank Capra did here was take a stage script, assemble the finest actors available, add a couple of scenes not seen onstage, and deliver a thoroughly entertaining still politically-relevant showcase.Tracy and Hepburn, as always, are solid and fascinating. Did anybody ever "catch" Spencer Tracy "acting?" That's the advice Burt Reynolds said Spence gave him on acting: "Don't let 'em catch you at it." There, in seven words, is the most profound advice ever given to actors. And Tracy absolutely embodied it throughout his long career.The single "stagiest" moment in "State of the Union" is Tracy's long speech to the old man at the wrought-iron fence in front of the rear-projection White House. An utterly impossible catalogue of history's "heroes," fictional and non-, who "spiritually" inhabit the White House -- "that noble edifice." The speech is a mouthful and pedantic to boot. But somehow, Tracy manages to pull it off.Hepburn, as always, is thoroughly captivating, both as a performer and in the character. Yet, as always, there are moments you "catch" her acting. Say, in her "drunken" transition from laughter to tears in the broadcast sequence that concludes "State of the Union." Hepburn's best and bravest work, perhaps, was in "Long Day's Journey Into Night." Her silliest and phoniest? "Bringing Up Baby." (Yet even there, she's still delightful!) Who else in "State of the Union" do you catch "acting?" Van Johnson. Margaret Hamilton. Taken as "comic relief," however, they're fine -- in a stagy sort of overplayed way.Certainly not Angela Lansbury or Adolphe Menjou. Both fine actors who long understood the different demands for stage and film. And delivered.What's alarming is the shoddy "continuity" early on. Perhaps for budgetary reasons, Capra couldn't reshoot the initial scene in Kay Thorndyke's (Angela Lansbury's) office. Or perhaps the continuity girl was home sick that day. Or the actors' couldn't remember their positions from setup to setup. Or Capra didn't care.Whatever. Virtually every cut in that office scene finds the participants (except Tracy, tellingly) in significantly different postures than from a split-second ago. Lansbury leans back in her chair behind her desk. CUT: she's sitting forward, leaning over papers on her desk. Etc., etc. It's jarring and sloppy.The highlight, among many highlights, of "State of the Union" is the near-end entry of Judge and Lulubelle Alexander at the home-broadcast of Tracy's pre-election address to the nation. Played by Raymond Turner and Maidel Walburn. You don't catch them acting, either. Maidel Walburn is particularly impressive as the jolly matronly alcoholic wife of a Louisiana politician. Walburn is the very definition of "supporting actor" here. She and Hepburn play off each other with seeming spontaneity and obvious great humor.Amazingly, one knows more about "Lulubelle" from this brief sequence -- her background, her humor as self-protection, her shallowness, her heartbreak, her essential goodness, her need for alcohol -- than one knows about the backstories of either Spencer Tracy's or Katharine Hepburn's characters. And it's not in the writing. It's in Walburn's effortless performance.Then "State of the Union" devolves into a Capra-esquire feel-good ending featuring a crowd of extras singing "for-he's-a-jolly-good-fellow" bromides as the wife and children huddle for a closeup. Better done in "It's a Wonderful Life" because Christmas was thrown into the mix. But still effective. In a cheaply manipulative kind of way.Great scenes. Wonderful performers. A rare gem.And you still can't catch Spencer Tracy acting.

It's ironic that this is probably the least well-known of the Tracy/Hepburn collaborations--and yet, it's among their best as far as performances and overall content is concerned. Everyone, including KATHARINE HEPBURN and SPENCER TRACY, looks good in this film. VAN JOHNSON has one of his most engaging roles as the good guy who sees through the manipulations of corrupt ANGELA LANSBURY and ADOLPHE MENJOU.And so, dirty politics is the theme of this film taken from the stage play by Howard Lindsey and Russel Crouse that starred RALPH BELLAMY and RUTH HUSSEY. Unfortunately, as directed by Frank Capra, it has a certain staginess about the proceedings with actors making entrances and exits as if on cue in rather static situations. But it's a pretty polished script and it's amusing to see the wonderful ANGELA LANSBURY (all of 23) playing a sophisticated woman in her 40s with such ease and perfection.Spencer has a role tailor-made for his abilities, a man whose integrity is so challenged that he refuses to play by the rules of the game and play party politics. Hepburn, as the wife aware of his affair with Lansbury, is forthright and honest in her performance and, thankfully, less mannered than usual.Still timely in the way it talks about Republicans and Democrats, it's worth seeing for the marvelous cast and what they manage to do with the stage material. The title, of course, refers to politics as well as the marital union of Tracy and Hepburn.