Adam's Rib (DVD)

When I was a about 8 years of age and growing up in Ireland, the state broadcaster RTE, for reasons best known to themselves spent two weeks showing a Spencer Tracey film every night. Perhaps it was because he was a Catholic actor and therefore on the ‘approved list’, perhaps it was because all his films had come out of copyright and could be shown without having to pay royalties or perhaps it was because someone in the broadcasting department was ...
...stay up for the first time in my life until 10.30 every night (but only because it was the Summer holidays) and so I got to see ten of these magical films. They taught me a lot, that love takes work, that conventionally handsome men can be a little vapid and empty and that Spencer Tracey when teamed with Katherine Hepburn was the most magical combination of actors that a genius producer could put together.

Think of famous ‘screen couples’ ... more

When I was a about 8 years of age and growing up in Ireland, the state broadcaster RTE, for reasons best known to themselves spent two weeks showing a Spencer Tracey film every night. Perhaps it was because he was a Catholic actor and therefore on the ‘approved list’, perhaps it was because all his films had come out of copyright and could be shown without having to pay royalties or perhaps it was because someone in the broadcasting department was a huge fan but whatever the reason, I got to stay up for the first time in my life until 10.30 every night (but only because it was the Summer holidays) and so I got to see ten of these magical films. They taught me a lot, that love takes work, that conventionally handsome men can be a little vapid and empty and that Spencer Tracey when teamed with Katherine Hepburn was the most magical combination of actors that a genius producer could put together.

Think of famous ‘screen couples’ now and who do you think of?
Jennifer Anniston's and David Schwimmer's characters out of friends?
Adam Sandler's and Drew Barrymore's coupling in the Wedding Singer?
Tom Hank's and Meg Ryan's romantic comedies together?
There is no couple nowadays that is brought together again and again, for the same volume of films as Tracy and Hepburn because of the sheer spark that they create when together in front of the camera.

Now here is an experiment; take any of the couples that I have imagined above and in your mind, make HIM, shorter, fatter, broader on the chest and shoulders, flatten and widen his nose to a shape that had taken a few punches, redden the face with the faint twinges of rosacea that are the signal of the heavy drinker. Make his face as craggy as a cliff-face. Thin out his hair and imagine it is that washed out coarse blonde colour that is the colour of straw that has sat too long in the field under the seasons. Give him the look of a determined bull that cannot be swayed by convention or society on ANYTHING he has made up his mind about.
Now with HER, stretch her out so that her feminine shape is almost angular and her hips appear as small as a scrawny teenage boy. Lengthen her, so that her cheekbones, as fabulous as they are cannot distract from the fact she is flat-chested and as tall as most men. Give her small rounded shoulders, a raspy voice which sounds like pipesmoke on a calm night and that same determined look in her eye as the man but with a definite hint of good humour in the lines around her mouth and eyes.

Now you have our starring couple……

It is important that the viewer understands what this couple looks like because it is how they appeared that made every film they starred in together an absolute diamond and this is the sparkliest, gemmiest, deepest diamond of the lot.

Classification:
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U

Rest of the cast:
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Judy Holliday ........ Doris Attinger
Tom Ewell ........ Warren Francis Attinger
David Wayne........ Kip Lurie
Jean Hagen ....... Beryl Caighn
Hope Emerson ........ Olympia La Pere
Eve March ........ Grace, Amanda's secretary
Clarence Kolb ........ Judge Reiser
Emerson Treacy ........ Jules Frikke, accountant
Polly Moran ........ Mrs. McGrath
Will Wright ....... Judge Marcasson

The plot:
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Adam and Amanda Bonner (Spencer and Hepburn) are a happily married childless pair of successful lawyers who live in a HUGE apartment in New York gently sparring with each other over points of law and the so-called gender divide with regards to the way that the law punished men and women offenders. One of the funnies scenes for me was them waking in the morning in separate beds in the same bedroom as film censorship at the time did not allow couples to be filmed in their nightclothes under the same set of sheets or perhaps that is why they were childless (nudge, nudge, wink, wink)

At this stage their morning adress to each other was with affectionate nicknames;

“Hello Pinkie”
“Hello, Pinkie”
"Mwah!"

What they did not know was that gentle sparring would soon become open war in a courtroom as they take opposite sides in the case of a woman (Holliday) who stood accused of shooting (but not fatally) her neglectful and adulterous husband (Ewell) after following him to a house and finding him in the rooms of his negligee-wearing mistress (Hagen). There was no doubt that Doris Attinger had done the deed but the question at the centre of the case was the double-standard that disallowed a woman from seeking revenge with a pistol - like a man.

Amanda, after reading about the case in the morning papers and not knowing that her husband has been appointed the prosecutor, rang the woman in jail (as you could in the 1940’s) and did not so much offer to defend her as tell that she WOULD be defended by the great Amanda Bonner.

That evening at a glittering dinner party in the Bonner’s apartment, Amanda dropped her bombshell;

“A girl named Doris Attinger shot her husband. I'm going to defend her”

Adam, who is coming into the room with a crowded drinks tray, hears this and shies like a startled horse - - every glass smashes and shatters to the floor as he realises the implication of what Amanda has just said. His face is a perfect picture of comic fury – anger written all over his craggy features with just one eyebrow raised giving him a quizzical look.

Their words to each other once all the guests have gone home become very far removed from the affectionate banter of the opening scenes. When Amanda refused to give up the case, Adam promises to;

" cut you into twelve little pieces and feed you to the jury. So get prepared for it!"

The viewer is then are left with the feeling that ‘Pinkie’ has turned nasty.

The irony of this case and the film is that Amanda yells at every occasion about the unjust treatment of women under the law. All she wants (she says) is for the law to look at the female the same way that they do the male. Whereas Adam says ‘The law is the law’ and should be followed to the letter. Period.

They are in fact saying the same thing but in the manicness of the publicity of the case (everyone in NY has an opinion on it), the fact that the media is analysing their statements in court and their personal relationship day after day, the interference of their single male neighbour from across the hall (Wayne) who flirts outrageously with Amanda and makes derogatory remarks about Adam, their courtrooms battles which are becoming more and more outrageous and their home-life which has denigrated into insults, stinging bum-slapping during massages and door slamming, they miss this very important point.

Then we realise that Amanda is trying to do the very thing that she rallies against – to have a woman treated differently under the law because she is a woman. She has her defendant coached to say that she was not trying to kill her erring husband (although she admitted to her firm jawed lawyer in an earlier scene that she was) but trying to frighten him and that she felt driven to do it because she saw his actions as those of a man who put her home and future of their three children at risk.

Amanda in her closing speech thunders;

“An unwritten law stands back of a man who fights to defend his home. Apply this same law to this maltreated wife and neglected woman. We ask you no more - Equality!...Consider this unfortunate woman's act as though you yourselves had each committed it. Every living being is capable of attack if sufficiently provoked. Assault lies dormant within us all. It requires only circumstance to set it in violent motion. I ask you for a verdict of not guilty. There was no murder attempt here - only a pathetic attempt to save a home.”

Adam, furious, at what he sees as an attempt to ride roughshod over the law of the land counters her final appeal to the jury with;

“Was she trying to kill her husband and Beryl Caighn or both? I smile. I find it a little difficult to proceed in this case without bursting into laughter at the utter simplicity of the answer and the puny excuse, well after the fact, that she was merely trying to frighten them. Simplicity! I resent - I resent any neighbour who takes the law into her own hands and places a special interpretation upon it, just for herself.”

Their differences come from one trying to defend womanhood and the other trying to defend universal law but in doing so they may have destroyed their marriage…

So will Beryl face a life sentence for attempted murder?

So will Amanda and Adam ever reconcile their differences and buy that dream house to retire to in the Hamptons?

Will Amanda decide that she cannot face life with a He-man like Adam and run off with their musician neighbour Kip Lurie who tries to seduce her with the words:

“Lawyers should never marry other lawyers. This is called inbreeding, from which comes idiot children and more lawyers...Lawyers should marry piano players or songwriters - or both. How would you like to give me a little kiss?”

This man is quite frankly as gay as gay can be (in the post 1985 sense) and makes my toes curl when he tries to make love to her (in the Jane Austin sense) “DON’T DO IT”, you find yourself yelling at the screen; “remember Liza Minelli and David Gest!”

To find out the answers to all these burning questions and many more – watch this DVD!

The DVD itself:
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It is shiny and round with a hole in the middle and … oh that is not what you wanted to know?

Region 2 encoding which means it is suitable for players in Europe, Japan, South Africa and the Middle East including Egypt.

Format: Black & White, Closed-captioned
Studio: Warner Studios
DVD Release Date: August 22, 1997
DVD Features: Theatrical trailer(s)
ASIN: 0792835972

Any extras?:
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Not really, there are 2 cinema trailers in that loud, happy and excited style of 1940s adverts. They go; “SEE this HILLAROUS film of who WEARS the THROUSERS” with 10 seconds clips of the film playing as they talk (yell) over it. Nothing to get too excited about but as the film sells for about £6-7 pounds, you were hardly going to get a ‘Lord of the Rings, 2 DVD, book, mini-disk, protective cover and magic spells to make him love you’ type of package.

Facts and figures;
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This film was Judy Holiday’s first big role after years of bit parts in Hollywood. Hepburn personally picked her for the role because of her elfin looks.

Hepburn owned the copyright of the film, she saw it preformed in a little stage off broadway and decided then and there that she was born to play Amanda Bonner. The script was kept in a drawer in her house until she has the time free to play the part, she then set about convincing the studio (Warner Bros) that the film had to be made. In 1949 filming started.

Available from:
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DVD Plus - In stock Price: £6.37 - FREE Shipping
Play.com - Usually dispatched within 24 hours - In stock Price: £6.9 - FREE Shipping
Pricestorm - In stock - Price: £5.99 - FREE Shipping

You might also like to read:
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An Affair to Remember by Christopher P. Andersen
(http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0380731584/ref=pd_ecs_b_d_h__a/202-5755676-6791042)

The story of the 26-year long real life romance of Hepburn and Tracy.

Thanks for reading, this is my first film/DVD op so be generous with advice...

:)
xx
E.

 

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