Touches You

Beautiful, moving film.

I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.

The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

Don't expect an uproariously slapstick comedy or one in which wise whip-cracks pepper the plot like a swarm of bees in a honey jar. True, the script has some delightfully daffy moments and the dialogue wonderfully witty lines, but the accent is firmly on believable characterization rather than sheer slapstick. The amusement derives from the attractive clash of two opposing temperaments - a formula that was to be repeated again and again in the Hepburn-Tracy comedies. Here in their first meeting, their technique is fresh, yet already marvelously refined. Tracy is delightfully pragmatic, Miss Hepburn amusingly vapid yet opinionated. And they are joined by a truly scintillating support cast. Dan Tobin is brilliantly funny as the glibly jaunty Gerald - easily the most memorable role of his career. He plays with such droll sophistication, even bettering Tracy at times, it's a great pity he was never to find such a part again.William Bendix was rather more fortunate. He has a typical role which he plays with a great sense of timing and enthusiasm. Fay Bainter's fans will not be disappointed - she has an important part - but most of the other players have little more than walk-ons. Nonetheless, Stevens has seen to it, that all excel. The only actor who seems a trifle miscast is Minor Watson who is too rough-and-ready a character for the ultra-queenly Hepburn's diplomat father.It's hard to beat Stevens for stylish direction that gets the most out of every dramatic or comic situation. Only the rather too mellifluous marriage ceremony seems overdone. Almost every other scene is paced, emphasized and edited to perfection.Under Ruttenberg's lighting (and in Adrian costumes), Hepburn never looked more radiant. Waxman has contributed a spirited score and the film is as proficiently polished as we would expect from MGM.

Wartime world war II was the struggle for the free world to keep their freedoms and aide nations whose freedoms were at risk or nations taken over to regain them. The roles of women in society had been changing slowly over the past few decades before that, so career women who dared to step up to what was normally the men's plate began to encourage other women to do the same. For popular columnist Tess Harding (Katharine Hepburn), her independence is all she knows, so so what if she can't make a pot of coffee or fry an egg? But a feud with a sports columnist is fixed with a risky solution: the best way to conquer an enemy is to marry them. Having ridiculed each other on the sly, Hepburn and Sam Craig (Spencer Tracy) begin to see each other socially, and impulsively, they get married. It's soon obvious that he is a traditionalist while she's a feminist, and obviously, neither of them want to change or compromise, and his frustration is quickly expanded. Their arguments become more aggressive after the initial amusement over their differences, and when she goes against her own ethics to try and become the traditional wife she thinks he wants, it has an even greater affect on her morale than it does on his digestion.You cannot compare gender issues of 1942 to post war year gender issues, let alone today's. Why a man would feel forced to change his ways in this era to appease his wife yet loose himself is as unacceptable now as it was then. The only difference now is that both sexes seem to be remaining single longer, while the war era created marriages on the spur of the moment that were regretted once the war was over. But Sam and Tess are career people at home together, who can discuss issues, and there's a lot of that. A ton of it, actually, and often, the intended comedy becomes intrusive drama that makes the two incompatible. Tess makes a fool out if herself in various ways, unable to make coffee or understand baseball, while Sam gets arrogant over her desire to keep her career as is. In a sense, it's very truthful, but it makes it difficult to root for either one without feeling sexist. Tracy and Hepburn are excellent in their first teaming together, and the writing often is brilliant. But you can't go into this with the idea that it's going to be a riotous comedy, because at times, it seems like it's written to create more battles between the sexes rather than try to create any type of understanding, let alone compromise.

... then start here, where they were introduced to each other and fell in love. You can actually feel that love in their performances. Tracy plays a sportswriter, Sam Craig, not a particularly well traveled man or a deep thinker. Hepburn plays Tess Harding, an international affairs correspondent, and with the world at war there is much to correspond about. Thus she runs around at a dizzying pace and I lost count of how many languages Tess spoke. Her mother died when she was an infant, and she grew up globetrotting with her father, and only returned to America as an adult.Tess and Sam meet when they have a war of words in their articles over baseball, and when the editor tells them to make up, that is when they begin seeing each other. Now Tess doesn't hide how busy she is, or how full her apartment often is of people from all over the world that she knows, yet Sam marries her and I get the feeling that he is disappointed that nothing changes. Their wedding being practically a drive through affair should have given him a hint.So naturally the marriage eventually fails when Sam walks out. That is Tess' first surprise. Her second surprise is when the woman she has patterned herself after for years and years, Ellen Whitcomb (Fay Bainter), makes a totally unexpected, but not unwelcome, move. How does this all work out? Watch and find out.I'm not sure this film is ultimately sexist or feminist. It does look like the script was trying to paint Hepburn's character as an ice queen, and she just acted her way out of being portrayed in that fashion. She ultimately plays it as a person who, if she takes up a task, goes all the way with it, right down to the humorous scene where she tries to make breakfast and acts like every utensil in the kitchen is from another planet, yet she persists in the face of hilarious adversity and inexperience. However, if you turn the roles of Sam and Tess around, you could say this was a feminist film, maybe giving men a dose of their own 1942 medicine when they expected women to just live with whatever work schedule the man had, even if they sat home alone at nights.I'd highly recommend this as one of the great romantic films, and they didn't make many of those during WWII outside of Casablanca.

"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.