The Philadelphia Story (1940)
Directed by George Cukor
When a rich woman's ex-husband and a tabloid-type reporter turn up just before her planned remarriage, she begins to learn the truth about herself.
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What critics compared The Philadelphia Story to
As if it’s isn’t enough to have such an intelligent pairing that includes odes to Casablanca , The Philadelphia Story , and references to Sartre, Camus, and even Powell’s Books, there’s also another tender platonic love story in the growing friendship between Ellie and Paul, who could’ve easily come off as a dumb jock stereotype if he weren’t so tenderly written and played with sweet intensity by Diemer.
The specter of those films is balanced by the classic movies (including “Casablanca,” “The Philadelphia Story” and “Wings of Desire”) Ellie watches with her father that cast a thematic glow over the proceedings.
That’s how it starts, cribbing sentiments from the old film romances (“Casablanca,” “Wings of Desire,” “The Philadelphia Story”) her dad watches, nonstop.
And in Andy Tennant's Hepburn homage (The Philadelphia Story meets Breakfast at Tiffany's), her spin as Melanie Carmichael (nee Smooter), a Deep South scruff turned Fashion Week design darling (godawful wardrobe notwithstanding), lacks both Kate's sly ambivalence and Audrey's sad grace.
But the movie itself is a disappointment, as director P.J. Hogan ("Muriel's Wedding") and screenwriter Ronald Bass ("Rain Man," "Waiting to Exhale") attempt a screwball domestic comedy in the vein of "Holiday" or "The Philadelphia Story."
The same essential concept fuels His Girl Friday (Grant and Rosalind Russell), The Philadelphia Story (Grant and Katharine Hepburn), and, in fact, the Alfred Hitchcock oddity Mr. and Mrs. Smith (Robert Montgomery and Carole Lombard).
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As Cary Grant states in The Philadelphia Story (1940), “to hardly know him is to know him well,” a complex sentiment we're guided into comprehending for Anora and Igor.
Gerwig’s direction of Robbie and the inclusion of an incredibly pointed, self-aware joke about her beauty and real-life persona calls to mind when George Cukor directed Katharine Hepburn to a hit in The Philadelphia Story after she had been unfairly dubbed box office poison.
Yes, better than The Philadelphia Story, better than The Apartment, better than the one-two punch of Annie Hall and Manhattan.
In the remarriage classics (“The Awful Truth,” “The Philadelphia Story,” “His Girl Friday”), the former partners have a way of talking and being with each other that they don’t have—and couldn’t possibly have—with anyone else.
But at 118 minutes it’s longer than “The Philadelphia Story” or “Annie Hall” or “When Harry Met Sally” or “500 Days of Summer” or, well, you get it.
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Beyond that, there is not a single original or uniquely handled item to be had—our heroes are not particularly interesting, their hostile banter is contrived and never funny and the elaborate scrapes they get into are lazily staged by director Patrick Hughes, the auteur of “The Expendables 3,” a film that comes across like “The Philadelphia Story” in comedic terms compared to this.
It’s the good old American yarn (Road to Morocco, Sabrina, The Philadelphia Story) of a beautiful girl in the predicament of two beautiful boys…