A Major Disappointment

One of the best movies of the year! Incredible from the beginning to the end.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.

The first of several movies to feature the celebrated partnership of Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn was this George Stevens-directed feature and an absolute delight it is. It works by treating both stars and their relationship as it became in real life, Tracy the older, "man's man", Hepburn, the flighty, more intellectual female, playing out a subtle battle of the sexes between themselves where in the final analysis both think they've won, but invariably, reflecting traditional, conservative and arguably chauvinistic mores of the day, it's Tracy who's character as here tends to win out. The well-known opening exchange between them in real-life, of the taller Hepburn pointing this out to Tracy to meet with the rejoinder "Don't worry, I'll soon cut you down to size" could inform the whole plot here, although it has to be said, it takes pretty much the whole of the movie to get there.What I like about Stevens' direction is the way he lets things play out almost it seems in real time, from the chaotic party at Hepburn's, all action news reporter Tess Harding's bursting-at-the-seams apartment, supposedly the site of her first date with Tracy's craggy, cynical sports reporter Sam Craig, then when Sam invites sports-virgin Tess to a US football game, to the couple's wedding night being hijacked by a high-profile Nazi- dissenting refugee statesman and his entourage arriving up at the near-silent final scene where Tess hilariously attempts to make Sam a conciliatory breakfast while he sleeps in his bachelor pad, after he's finally walked out on her.The two stars are marvellous, especially when they're together on the screen as signalled from their very first meeting as Tracy leeringly but guiltily eyes up Tess's leg from bottom to nearly the top as she straightens out her stocking seam. You really can see the chemistry sparking between them but even more than that you get to see two actors both with impeccable timing coupled with an obvious mutual respect, each allowing the other to fully play out scenes opposite one another.The two of them not unnaturally dominate the screen and unsurprisingly overpower the supporting actors in their wake, but one gets the feeling that's exactly what motivated director Stevens to make the film as he did. Witty, sharply observed and sorry to repeat myself, exquisitely played, this is an excellent film which happily led to one of the most productive movie-partnerships of Hollywood's Golden Age, in more ways than one.

This movie attracted me from the start. Something about Ms. Hepburn that is so fascinating and intriguing, which really shines throughout this film. She is almost inspiring at how a suave and elegant and accomplished person should be, but of course with its faults. The plot perhaps was a bit squashed and felt sped up between when they like each other, to when they're living together. I wish we would've seen how they acted if dating for weeks and weeks on end, since Spencer's character almost immediately after moving in was annoyed (an visibly so, almost to an a-hole level), as if he didn't expect this, or that his love and infatuation for her almost completely disappeared instantly. Also, I understand the need for the type of ending it had, but the last maybe 20 minutes of the film were completely predictable, and dragged after a few minutes. The film obviously could've had a tighter script, and and editing towards the end, but overall I really enjoyed it, and felt it to be a worthwhile watch.

"Woman of the Year" is a blend of comedy, drama, and romance, with a rocky romance the main glue. It's the first pairing of Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn of nine they would have in their careers. It was also the start of their off-screen romance and affair that would last until his death in 1967. The film is a lightly humorous story of opposites attracting one another. Tracy is a sports columnist, Sam Craig, and Hepburn is a political columnist, Tess Harding. Both work for the same newspaper, and start a small feud in their columns before the newspaper publisher, Mr. Clayton (played by Reginald Owen) calls them together to end the spat. They had never met before, but we know that romance will bloom from their first exchange of looks. Some of the earlier reviews are interesting and discuss different aspects of this film, including role reversal, feminine liberation, battle of the sexes, etc. So, I'll focus my remarks on the distinctions and some character aspects that most others have not discussed. Tess knew how to speak several languages. She had traveled the world, and lived in many cultures, being raised in a diplomatic family. She was well read, educated, informed and opinionated on foreign relations and the ways of the world. Her only shortcomings were that she had no natural attributes for caring for others or doing "the little ordinary things that any idiot can do" – in her words. But, Sam falls for her and she for him. This MGM film came out on Feb. 5, 1942. It was less than two months after the U.S. entered World War II. The screenplay and dialog have a few references to international intrigue and even war, but not much explicit. The studio heads should have had enough sense since 1939 and the outbreak of the war in Europe, to be wary of films and scripts that might be dated during wartime. This one just got by, even though audiences going to theaters would still have had Pearl Harbor and the war on their minds. Comedy had a place in relieving tensions during the war, but this film has only mild comedy. It's scenarios might induce smiles once in a while, but the film has no hilarious antics and only an occasional witty line of dialog. Apparently, an original ending went over like a lead balloon in some test screenings so MGM rewrote the last 15 minutes of the movie. The main writers were off to war or elsewhere, and Hepburn was against the revisions. I've read what the original was and it seemed quite contrived and forced. The kitchen scene toward the end is the replacement, and I think it's the funniest and only really laughable part. Here was the high achieving, intelligent, multi-lingual, well-known and famous woman of the world. For all of her education and training, having been raised with servants to do everything for her, Tess didn't even know how to boil water. She has no clue about how to make coffee. She tries to turn on a gas burner on the stove by turning on a timer buzzer. She puts bread in a toaster and then tries to get it down by shaking the toaster and pounding it on the cupboard. She separates egg whites from yolks by using a strainer and creating a mess. When Tess learns that she was chosen as International Woman of the Year, she places a call to her Aunt Ellen to tell her. Sam and their adopted five-year old boy, Chris, are there and listening. Tess says, "Ellen, the most wonderful thing that's ever happened to me has just happened." Her marriage and love weren't more wonderful? Her adopted son wasn't more wonderful? No doubt, her Woman of the Year award would bring her comfort and love for years to come.Then, going out for her award banquet she tells Sam that her maid, Alma, has already gone to the banquet. There was no one to watch and stay with little Chris and she thought he would be OK left alone for four hours or more. But, Sam knows better. He skips the banquet and stays with Chris. He later takes the boy back to the orphanage where he is happily welcomed back by some young friends. Yes, it was the Woman of the Year who would leave a five-year old child, and one recently adopted, all alone at home. I wonder if many women – mothers, homemakers, wives, single working women, and women with careers and families, didn't sense a feminine put- down by Tess in some of her remarks. For all of her education and training, Tess couldn't do the simple things that ordinary people know how to do to survive. Yet, she calls them idiots. Her comedy sequence in the kitchen at the end was a nice indictment. If idiocy exists, it must surely reach into the ranks of the privileged. The movie is based on a Broadway play. It's entertaining and enjoyable, but nothing special. Toward the end when Tess attends the wedding of her long-widower father, William (played by Minor Watson), and her aunt Ellen (Fay Bainter), the camera gives a close-up of her face for some time. Tears well up in her eyes and run down her cheeks as we hear the message of the clergyman marrying her dad and aunt. He speaks of the love and support of husband and wife for one another. I wonder if she gave any thought to the wife and children of Spencer Tracy, the man with whom she was beginning an adulterous relationship.

"Women should be kept clean, like canaries," secondary character Phil Whittaker (Roscoe Karns) muses at a baseball game. In attendance is Sam Craig (Spencer Tracy), a sportswriter, and his date, foreign correspondent Tess Harding (Katharine Hepburn). You see, the two are sitting in the coveted section of the arena set for journalists. While the other writers are attempting to get a story from the day's event, the loud Tess, wearing a large hat that blocks the view of hungry onlookers, constantly interrupts the tension by asking questions any non-sports fan would be curious about. It annoys everyone around her, except for the enchanted Sam — Phil's (jokingly?) sexist comment is well-timed but funny, as we're aware that Tess is a ball of fire that just won't be constrained like some clean canary.The first forty-five minutes of "Woman of the Year" are a romantic comedy dream, a battle- of-the-sexes marriage satire that wonders aloud if a tough-guy like Spencer Tracy can handle having a wife that wears the pants of the relationship and brings home most of the bacon, while he, a mere sportswriter, sits around, waiting to be loved. But once those forty-five minutes are up, things sour, turning into a feminist nightmare. The film decides to turn against its titular Woman of the Year, critical that she likes to work hard, wishing that she could become a dream spouse, a wife full-time. Ugh. "Woman of the Year" is, famously, the first pairing of Hepburn and Tracy, who endured a relationship lasting until his death in 1967. Unlike many of the other on screen/offscreen couples of the era (Lauren Bacall and Humphrey Bogart, Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward), the two were never married, and Hepburn, most of the time, seemed to dominate the relationship, with her trouser-wearing, exercise-loving persona. Tracy, in the meantime, was her foil, the guy who kept her from saying things like "I'm a personality as well as a star" most of the time. They were and are a dynamite pair, but "Woman of the Year" depletes what makes them so charismatic (though not all the time), placing them in roles that attempt to turn them into that old, cute married couple upstairs.When Tess Harding and Sam Craig first hear of each other, fireworks hardly set off. Sam hears Tess dismiss the sports industry on the radio, favoring a world that focuses on the important things rather than the fluffers, and decides to write an article that criticizes her sensible ideas. Tess writes back, deflating his ego, and so on, and so on. They become rivals — until their very first meeting. Sam is struck by her intelligently sexy poise; Tess is attracted to Sam's gentlemanly instincts. They court, ultimately marrying. But what was once magnetic to Sam is getting old. Tess is so in love with her job that he can hardly count on her to greet him at home after a long day of work. Can she be the Woman of the Year and the Wife of the Year, too?There isn't anything wrong with a marriage drama — but "Woman of the Year" initially promises that we're going to get a brainy romantic comedy, and, unexpectedly, turns into a drama with seldom comedy and not enough romance. It feels like Tess and Sam spend more of the film in turmoil than in love, and laughs exist only in the first and final acts — anything in-between is slightly bitter. So much of the time is used up with Tracy pouting about Hepburn's chronic busyness. I would have preferred a story in which Tess maybe brought Sam along with her on her many globetrotting endeavors, turning him into an odd- man-out while enjoying some pleasing comedic situations.But most of the time, "Woman of the Year" stays serious, a disappointing fact considering how funny it can be. The ending, which sees Tess trying to be the perfect housewife by making Sam breakfast in bed, rings with potential hilarity. Hepburn is game, and her timing is flawless. In fact, the scene is hilarious. But it's also coated in wasted energy; why couldn't more of "Woman of the Year" had scenes like this? The film's many failures are not the fault of Hepburn and Tracy, though — Hepburn, in an Oscar nominated performance, slides through comedic, dramatic, and romantic scenes like a grizzled veteran, and Tracy, always an appealing lead, manages to keep Sam from going down too harsh of a path. "Woman of the Year" would have been better as a screwball comedy, or a romantic drama without Tracy that saw career woman Hepburn flying around the globe, using men along the way, perhaps falling in love accidentally. But the film doesn't know if it wants to be a romantic comedy or a marriage drama. It's unsatisfying.