---
title: Adam's Rib
type: Movie
date: 2023-02-26
rating: 4
genre:
  - Romcom
year: 1949
director: George Cukor
status: Finished
image: adams-rib.jpeg
tags:
  - movie
colorSortKey: [0, 121, 7]
---
 I was surprised to discover how, upon completing this movie, how much I disliked it given how obvious it should have been a personal hit — Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn (I am not the world's biggest Spencer Tracy fan, considering him a sort of Paul Pierce figure [^1], but their chemistry alone is a draw), George Cukor behind the camera, mid-century sexual and relationship dynamics, and a svelte runtime.

But I am left with a feeling of _something_, a cocktail that sits between sour cynicism and a certain disappointment. It is almost entirely ascribable to the gulf between what was on the edge of women's liberalism in 1949 and, well, today — or perhaps to Cukor's unwillingness to commit to either earnestness or slapstick [^2]. There were two scenes that struck me as _real_ in a way the star vehicles of this era never really do:

- Judy Holliday (delightful, but underused)'s character monologue of her abuse and descent; - Tracy's character hitting the breaking point, and the ensuing argument with Hepburn — a confrontation   that feels _real_ in its flitting between loud and quiet, between anger and sadness.

But the rest — the series of testimonies, the whole David Wayne experience, the _Vive la difference_ — it felt a bit too much like caricature.

[^1]:     Solid in every respect, but in almost every single role there's someone who could have     done it better.

[^2]:     And in that way — a wish for the viewer to simultaneously treat the entire proceedings as silly and     as serious — it is a very modern comedy.