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Exoticalot People are voting emotionally.

Platicsco Good story, Not enough for a whole film

FirstWitch A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

mark.waltz Recently, I saw the Broadway revival of Gore Vidal's "The Best Man", a 1960 play about a presidential convention overrun with scandal concerning secrets of two candidates. The head of the women's division in that play was portrayed by Angela Lansbury who 64 years before played the head of a powerful newspaper manipulating, err.. supporting Spencer Tracy for the Republican Nomination. (That was before the term "Republican" became a dirty word...) In between this movie (based upon a hit Broadway play that was still running when this movie was released) and that Broadway play, she played another political power, albeit a viperously evil one, in John Frankenheimer's extremely controversial "The Manchurian Candidate". So the world of politics has really turned for this magnificent actress who wouldn't become the huge star she is today until a certain Broadway musical and later a smash hit TV series made her a house-hold name.It is insinuated that Lansbury has been "the other woman" in the marriage of Tracy and Katharine Hepburn, the model couple with two adorable children. Once, in fact, it is said that Hepburn threw Lansbury out of their house. So now Lansbury, as the deviously intelligent Kay Thorndyke, has taken over her late father's newspaper, and convinces political bigwig Adolph Menjou that Tracy is their puppet..I mean, man. Knowing that an underlying element of scandal is afoot concerning Lansbury and Tracy, Menjou insists that Hepburn support her husband, becoming more of an Eleanor Roosevelt than a Bess Truman. Tracy is the honest sort, an older version of director Frank Capra's previous heroes Mr. Deeds and Mr. Smith, although Lansbury is extremely close to Jean Arthur's Babe in "Mr. Deeds" and Barbara Stanwyck's Ann Mitchell, perhaps a bit more crafty and self-serving. Hepburn comes off like Donna Reed's wife in "It's a Wonderful Life", exploding when she needs to, particularly a wonderful drunken bit at a party where she must try and be cordial to Lansbury.The wonderful supporting cast can't be topped; In addition to those I've mentioned, there are wonderful performances by Lewis Stone (in a cameo as Lansbury's dying father), Van Johnson (as the typical grinning "fair-haired" boy, Lansbury's ace reporter with mixed loyalties), Charles Lane, and the wonderful Margaret Hamilton who shines as the flirtatious maid with a crush on Johnson. Some other less known faces have magnificent moments too, particularly Maidel Turner as a judge's wife with a taste for booze; Raymond Walburn (a Capra regular) as the buffoon judge; and Florence Auer as a larger-than-life supporter of Tracy's campaign (as long as her agenda is met). Irving Bacon is hysterically funny as the bartender in the party sequence with a justified mistrust of Lansbury.Most Capra films were often dramas with bits of comedy thrown in (to take away the sentimentality of the plots, hence the term "Capra-Corn") and this film is no exception. Probably one of the best known sequences of this film is the aviation scene where Tracy and a pilot pal show off their flying skills. Johnson prepares to get sick as the plane does loopty-loops while Hepburn simply knits. This adds a more human touch to Tracy's character so when he starts to get sidetracked by Lansbury's manipulations, you'll root for him to find his way back.In this year of an election, some might call these political dramas of a different time quite dated. Yes, if you take away the cell phones, blogs, tweets, over-abundance of social media that can destroy a candidate before they even have a chance to defend themselves, they are dated. But seeing them is a reminder of while they were still ruthless and sometimes deadly, there was still more truth and honesty than there is today. Tracy's speech towards the end is up there with his beautiful soliloquy at the end of "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner". Hepburn, the Meryl Streep of her day, proves that while she may be known to everybody else as just a wife and mother, she's got a lot more in her than everybody (especially Lansbury) believed. I think this is perhaps Lansbury's finest screen performance while at MGM (certainly her best photographed), but the Oscars tended not to acknowledge villains all that much. Lansbury's well-dressed viper is up there along with Gale Sondergaard for her sometimes quiet calculated cat-like manner. She would be a check-mark on my ballot box for this performance any day.

Ed Uyeshima 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.

Holdjerhorses 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.

theowinthrop This is probably (except for WITHOUT LOVE ?) the most forgotten of the Tracy - Hepburn film parings. As has been pointed out it has not been revived that frequently, and as a result people barely remember it. But it has a terrific cast (the two leads, Angela Lansbury, Van Johnson, Adolphe Menjou, Charles Dingle, Raymond Walburn, Irving Bacon, even Carl "Alfafa" Switzer), and for all the dated references to politics in 1947 - 48, it still has amazing relevance. Therefore, if it is not up to the best Capra films of the late 1930s to IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE, it does help lead the second tier with POCKETFUL OF MIRACLES and A HOLE IN THE HEAD.Tracy's character (as pointed out by another poster on this thread) is suggested by Wendell Wilkie. Wilkie is another figure who once loomed largely in America, but who is now as faded as old wall paper. He headed the largest privately owned utilities company in the U.S., which had to be broken up after the New Deal got underway. This was really ironic, because Wilkie was a life-long Democrat. Coming out of Indiana he had gone a long way (F.D.R.'s acid tongued Interior Secretary, Harold Ickes, referred to him - with a look towards an old poem by John Greenleaf Whittier - as "The barefoot boy from Wall Street."). Wilkie got involved in politics in the late 1930s, with respect to his suspicions about where the New Deal was headed. He turned Republican, and in 1940 surprised the nation by beating out Thomas Dewey and Senator Robert Taft for the Republican nomination for President at Philadephia. It has been pointed out that in the movie, I MARRIED A WITCH, the slogan "Win With Wilkie" is used as a reference for gubernatorial candidate Wooley (Frederic March) as "Win With Wooley". A Bugs Bunny cartoon about "gremlins" (little mechanical problems in war machines) has the "gremlin" shout that he isn't Wendell Wilkie. F.D.R. won, but his sizable victories in 1932 and 1936 were not repeated. Wilkie actually demonstrated that the Republican Party was far from dead.Unfortunately Wilkie never repeated this success politically. An independent, most of the party leaders felt he wasn't Republican enough. He took a trip around the globe to visit the battlefronts, and wrote an account ONE WORLD, which became a best seller - and helped prepare the American people for the successful creation of a United Nations. In 1944 FDR was approached by some advisers to consider Wilkie as his running mate for Vice President. Roosevelt was less than happy with the idea. In the end it did not matter - Wilkie died.Keeping that in mind, Tracy's character Grant Matthews makes sense. He is a wealthy independent person. He is married but he has extra-marital affairs (as did Wilkie, which was one of the reasons his campaign did not use FDR's affair with Lucy Mercer against him). If you recall, Tracy tells a stunned Adolphe Menjou his idea of bringing democracy to the world through a United States of the world (like Wilkie's "One World"). Tracy's relationship with Hepburn is that of a good man who has fallen into a trough in his home-life. Apparently at one point they shared a great deal, but Tracy's ego takes off when manipulated by Lansbury, as opposed to Hepburn who is more down-to-earth. It is only when she bitterly throws her own opinions aside and makes a hated speech for his campaign that he realizes how much she compromised her ideals for him, and how much he's compromised - and for what? His Presidency would owe a lot to the likes of Walburn, Dingle, and Florence Auer: a questionable Southern Republican, a crooked labor leader (who thinks John L. Lewis and William Green are anathema), and a woman's whose power base is due to prejudice against certain foreign groups. He'd also owe Menjou (more about him later) and Lansbury would expect free access to the Oval Office.The most interesting of the group is actually Menjou. One of American's best political managers he is bitter. His Connover is not a bad man (actually he is quite tolerable), but he has been shunned because of a connection he could not avoid with the "Ohio Gang" that put Warren Harding in the White House in 1920, and then stole millions (Connover didn't). He'd like to get the Chairmanship of the Republican Party to get back at his foes - not a nice thing but it is understandable. In the end he does not get too upset when plans go awry. He's kept on the payroll as a political editor for Lansbury. Actually one feels good for him.Similarly one feels good for Van Johnson. A cynic, like Lionel Stander in MR. DEEDS GOES TO TOWN, he regains his ideals observing Hepburn's reactions to the political crap, and is involved in finally turning Tracy around. Lansbury is aware of this, and fires him. He smiles with happiness to be well out of the job for her.The best moment to me in the film is a nice moment when Tracy is contemplating the run for the White House offered by Lansbury and Menjou. He stands in front of the White House next to an actor named Maurice Cass, who is only in this scene in the movie. Cass is rhapsodizing about how wonderful it is that every President since John Adams has lived in the White House. Tracy says it needs a paint job. Cass takes him to task for only seeing that. Tracy sticks to his guns about the paint job, but he lists all of the great figures who fought for freedom (including Crispus Attucks, by the way) and how the White House is their monument. At the end he and Cass go off for a drink together. A simple moment - pure Capra-corn, but really worth it.