Adam’s Rib
Romantic Comedy | 101 Minutes | 1949 | United States
(4/4)
Director: George Cukor | Producer: Lawrence Weingarten | Writers: Ruth Gordon, Garson Kanin | Starring: Spencer Tracy, Katharine Hepburn, Judy Holliday, David Wayne, Tom Ewell, Jean Hagen, Hope Emerson | Music: Miklós Rózsa | Cinematographer: George J. Folsey | Editor: George Boemler
In the opening scenes of Adam’s Rib, a woman wearing a feathered hat and veil chews nervously on a candy bar before following a man through the streets and subways of Manhattan. When he arrives at his destination, she follows him inside and hearing music through the door, pulls out the gun which has already spilled from her handbag.
After flicking through the pages of an instruction manual, she fires at the latch and bursts through the door, where she finds her husband in the arms of his lover. Scrunching her eyes she shoots haphazardly across the room, doing more damage to the fixtures and furnishings before catching her husband in the shoulder. As the mistress flees the scene, the woman covers her stricken spouse and begins weeping.
It’s a curious introduction to a film that seeks to straddle the line between the genres of drawing room farce and courtroom drama. Instead in Adam’s Rib the courtroom becomes the site of a gender-based farce, while the drawing room bears host to rapier wit and verbal jousting. There’s precision as well as an easygoing charm to some of the dialogue, penned by the wife-and-husband team of Ruth Gordon and Garson Kanin, and to the performances of a stellar cast led by Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn.
Adam (Spencer Tracy) and Amanda Bonner (Katharine Hepburn), a couple of happily married lawyers who live in an upper-floor apartment in New York, begin to clash when they land on opposite sides of a trial for attempted murder. Adam in his role as an assistant district attorney prosecutes the case, while Amanda takes up the cause on behalf of the defendant, the erratic shooter Doris Attinger (Judy Holliday). Adam views the matter in black and white, believing that Doris broke the law and deserves to be punished, while Amanda delights in teasing out some of the nuances of the case, perceiving an opportunity to rail against gender imbalances.
The courtroom hijinks progress from furtive glances as Amanda flashes her petticoat and pokes her tongue, to a full-blown circus act as she calls on the talents of three female professionals. After hearing from a doctor and an industry supervisor, a strongwoman performs backflips and hoists Adam with one hand before the court, as Amanda seeks to demonstrate the equality of the sexes.
Her argument runs the gamut from the emotive to the tenuous. Beyond the basic defense – which is that despite the abuse she has suffered at the hands of her husband, Doris was only acting out of desperation in an attempt to keep her family together – the paraphernalia of gender equality strives mostly to induce a little added sympathy in the minds of the jury members. Broad gestures and moral virtues might make them view this particular case more from the perspective of a jilted wife and forlorn mother. In some aspects the ideas might seem ahead of their time, but in Adam’s Rib the courtroom antics really play second fiddle, serving to filter back into the domestic drama.
Anyway is anyone fool enough to push the precedence of men when faced with another indomitable performance from Katharine Hepburn? At home Amanda maintains the pretence that Adam is in charge, through small kisses and some of the postures of subservience. In reality she pulls the strings and revels in teasing out some of his foibles and indelicacies. The chemistry between Hepburn and Tracy as they bicker and clasp one another at arm’s length bristles with the vim and vigour of life. Inevitably in a sort of stately heap they will fall back in together.
In court Judy Holliday plays Doris Attinger with an earthy relish, wearing the anguish of her situation while remaining alert to the cues from her lawyer. Yet it is David Wayne who almost walks away with the film, courtesy of his performance as Kip Lurie, neighbour to the Bonners and a successful songwriter. When Adam and Amanda play a home movie illustrating their purchase of a farm, Kip is ready at every turn with an aside as plausible as it is obnoxious. His unending stream of witty remarks and Adam’s growing irritation make this extended scene a sheer pleasure.
Later in his overt attempts to woo Amanda, Kip composes a song which becomes a radio hit. In fact the song was written by Cole Porter, whose efforts led to a change in the script: as Kip remarks during the course of the film, few names scan better than ‘Amanda’.
In 1949, the director George Cukor and Hollywood at large were in something of a rut. The dazzling romances of old had lost their lustre amid the atrocities of the Second World War, replaced by genre fare and rote dramatisations. The best moments of Adam’s Rib still feel like a breath of fresh air. Its central conundrum is hearty and hale, and with a final flourish it understands that marriage equality begins in the bedchamber.
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