The Philadelphia Story (1940)
On the eve of her wedding, wealthy and beautiful socialite Tracy Lord is confronted with three admirers, and her own desire not to be worshipped but to be loved.
ALEX
When you say ‘I love you,’ how do you know that the other understands what you mean by ‘love’? Tracy Lord presents the audience with this question about the meaning of ‘love’, starts the film with a very clear answer, and ends the film with a hazy re-write of her definition. At the film’s conclusion, she seems to be saying that love is a surrender to things not clearly understood.
Of course, all our deeper philosophical questions should probably be aimed at each other and not the film, because The Philadelphia Story is less about contemplation and more about the thrill of watching Katharine Hepburn dance, beautifully and hilariously, through and about the hearts of her suitors.
JADE
Hepburn, as Tracy Lord, has softened over the course of the movie, surrendered to love. This is a traditionally feminine psychic development: while a man rises to the occasion of love, a woman surrenders, gives in. This is exactly what happens in Apuleius’s tale of Psyche and Eros. It is Psyche’s very human desire to appear beautiful to the man she loves that leads to her fall.
You and I both have trouble with the notion that the image of Tracy as a transcendent goddess is necessarily a bad one. Yet, I am struck by her words “I don’t want to be worshipped, I want to be loved.” When she says it, she is wishing for an equal. Over the course of the film it appears she has to fall, or be knocked down a peg, in order to really be loved. It seems to me far more romantic if her husband became more godlike to match her. It’s not even clear that Tracy is such a cold hard bitch anyway, though that’s what everyone says; as a force on screen she is completely exuding life. I don’t think she seems cold; rather, she might be too intensely fiery.
“Her religion is strength,” one of her weak little admirers says resentfully. What’s so wrong with that? The film begins with Tracy, her mother and sister alone in their house. There, she is a pillar of strength, morality, and discipline.
ALEX
At best, what appears to us as weak men knocking down a goddess would instead be an unrealistically rigid and detached woman finally learning to connect with reality. She focuses too much on austere Beauty, so the magical spell of alcohol brings a more earthly Beast into her personality.
JADE
What are we talking about when we say love? Your friend Ayn Rand says love is a response to values. The men in The Philadelphia Story might represent different kinds of values (love) for Tracy Lord.
Kittredge is a representation of Tracy’s explicit values at the start of the film: As an American industrialist and “striver” he is the image of her value of self respect. He’s what she thinks a man ought to be: strong, moral, self-made.
ALEX
The prejudices of the screenwriter immediately show themselves here in Kittredge’s depiction. Without any illustrative proof, we’re repeatedly told how shallow and unfit he is. Tracy’s the only one in the film that honors his achievements, and success in the movie’s terms is to throw away these as inconsequentials in favor of something more emotional.
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Instead the film focuses on Tracy’s attraction to the tabloid writer Macaulay Connor, but it appears far less logical. Her fascination with him stems partially from the fact that he’s her adversary. But as she reads his stories, she sees his soul and is drawn to the reality of it. She finds something in Connor which she values more than the explicitly stated values of Kittredge: Connor has the intensity of spirit that Tracy requires. It’s to Connor’s intensity, more than Kittredge's stoic, respectable notions of morality and industry, that Tracy is drawn. While Kittredge represents the mechanics of what makes life possible, Connor represents life itself, that raw flame which ignites the machines of industry Kittredge is dedicated to.
ALEX
Connor is also surly, childish, and resentful of a world that he says doesn’t respect him enough. Yet by references to his book we know the truth of what you’re saying; he’s connected to a basic inner passion that Kittredge uses, but has no words for. I think Tracy and Connor are finding common ground on the basis of their immaturity, as well as their passion. To put it more compassionately, Connor’s got a finger on the Beast, and Tracy’s journey in this movie is to correct her over-emphasis on Beauty with a more explicit statement of her own Beast.
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Why Tracy loves her ex-husband Dexter and ultimately chooses him is yet more mysterious. Throw out the obvious explanation of the 40s-era remarriage trope, and their reunion isn’t clear at all. Perhaps trying to logically understand love is a fool’s errand. But I will take on Ayn Rand’s challenge: if love is a response to values, a love that seems inexplicable is a response to values you have not yet made explicit. Then it becomes necessary to fulfill the Jungian journey of discovering and bringing to light those values already lying dormant and implicit within us. In this sense, one does not have to create values or truths, but only to understand and articulate what one already silently knows. It’s possible that Dexter, like Connor, has a great intensity of spirit, though we never really see that demonstrated. It’s suggested that his alcoholism stems from that beastly intensity within him, to which Tracy is both drawn and repelled. This film fails the great artistic challenge of bringing to light those dormant and implicit values; we’re expected to merely accept them much in the way Puck asks the audience to accept the events in Shakespeare’s play, as a “weak and idle theme / no more yielding but a dream”.
ALEX
Dexter represents a basic chord of True Reality running beneath Tracy’s experience. It’s not glorious, it’s not outspoken, it’s simply a deep understanding of Tracy Lord and how best to serve her development. The film doesn’t do the necessary work of showing who and what Dexter is in the privacy of his own mind; a result I think of taking on too many narrative tasks within one film. Or of bad acting. Yet in Dexter we find the ideal mix of all three extremes: Tracy’s gravitas and power, Kittredge’s ability to work in the physical world (Dexter designs and builds sailboats), and Connor’s ability to see truth and beauty. He is able to use this balance of characteristics to see and worship Tracy’s goddess nature, yet also critique her and mold her into ever-more-ideal forms. Unlike the film’s other men, he sees her power and volatility and is unafraid, in fact he is empowered to take charge.
JADE
It could have been saved so easily! To display Dexter’s interiority and his Prospero nature, the film only needed a couple voice-overs from him at beginning, middle, and end, to show us his relationship to the plot as not just storyteller, but orchestrator and creator.
ALEX
As it’s presented, The Philadelphia Story is primarily about the emotional development of Tracy Lord and Macaulay Connor. It was a blast to discover in our video a more ideal ending that focused on them: Their romance culminates in Tracy ending her engagement, Connor finally maturing enough to win Liz, and so Connor and Liz hilariously leap into the gap of the marriage ceremony to get hitched themselves. While the ceremony commences, Tracy and Dexter quietly realize a new flame between each other. This, because the film simply didn’t have enough time to show us their complete union. It was a huge leap of narrative to go from Tracy and Connor learning about each other, to Tracy completely and confidently choosing Dexter.
JADE
That jump to the finish–the happy union of Tracy and Dexter–is very Shakespearean in my view. By a little faith, trust, and pixie dust, the audience sees a happily ever after. But it’s not earned, leaving us with a smile that feels a bit hollow, suggesting that a happy ending is a sudden gift by luck or chance, appearing without reason. This sort of love between Tracy and Dexter, and the sudden nature of their happy ending, seems more like a negation of the other men in the film, rather than a positive injunction about the truth of the two of them.