v_hawkins2003

Tracy and Hepburn do their best acting-wise and MGM tries to utilize their personal traits--her idealism, his stern 'American individualism' but Conrad Richter's allegorical story about a proud man losing and reclaiming his wife becomes soapy when it has to be literally translated for the screen--especially when adultery and illegitimacy could not be forthrightly dealt with. There are too many awkward holes in the narrative-for instance how does Hepburn support herself for twenty years? Why does the Walker character become an outlaw? Having said that I was surprised to see how much affectionate byplay Tracy and Hepburn could fit into this story. They do not act like the couple in Casablanka or Romeo and Juliet--they are married after all--as they usually are in their films and often seemed to act as if they were in real life.

I did not get around to seeing this movie until the late 70's on TV--always assumed it would be cutesy since the duo were even a bit past middle-aged. I was surprised at how much the writers understood the social texture of an office and how a woman could genuinely LOVE a job that was not glamorous--while acknowledging the attitude that a woman was supposed to want to be married--even if she does so half-heartedly--when the opportunity finally arises. The movie leaves the future of Bunny--what is that supposed to be short for?--and Richard open--two such CONTENTED workaholics getting married would have ruined the picture.

There is a subliminal message in all of Hepburn's spinster roles that suggest that a middle-aged woman can have sexual feelings and want a sexual relationship for itself rather than only as a means to reach the married state

I have not seen this movie since the 60's. It is never shown at Hepburn retrospectives and I suspect that is because Clara Schumann--a married woman with a lot of children--is deemed some sort of affront to the Hepburn image or feminism or both.Their social circumstances may have been very different but the Clara Schumann I have read about shared many of Kate's qualities--energy, ambition,frankness and a frantic devotion to the seriously troubled man she chose to share her life with.People who deride the film usually never saw it. Or maybe they do not like classical music but want to hide their feelings behind claims of historical inaccuracies I would like to know more about the director Clarence Brown