Fave Raves: Holiday
May 12th 2008 07:06
The first film I always blurt out when asked to recommend an old flick is 'Holiday' starring Katherine Hepburn and Clark Gable.
You know enough about the indomitable Ms. Hepburn without me blathering on about her legend. If you need a refresher, try this and 'Christopher Strong' from her early canon. So much has been written in the last decade about Mr. Grant's underappreciated comedic skill that the term 'underappreciated' need not apply anymore. Grant was money in comedies, he rarely disappoints.
"Oh Cary, if only you were an alcoholic..."
For those who enjoyed 'The Philadelphia Story', expect the same rapid fire wit in 'Holiday'. Donald Ogden Stuart adapted both for the screen from Phillip Barry's plays. George Cukor, talented at converting great theatre to brilliant screen, directs.
For a comedy, this film has alot of serious subtext; alcoholism, Fascism, soulless Capitalism all are rolled up into the sarcastic and playful interplay that the Seton's upstairs games room seems to bring out in the characters, each about to take their final step into complete and irreversible adulthood.
No Hepburns were injured in the making of this post.
Hepburn plays the free spirited but insecure Linda Seton, of the New York Setons. Old money, stoically unemotive, dress for dinner Setons. Linda's sister Julia has just brought home her boyfriend Johnny Chase (Grant), unaware that Julia's family are those Setons. Johnny is surprisingly disinterested in losing his soul to the corporate world, a point Julia tries to prevent him from broadcasting before he asks her father for her hand in marriage. Linda becomes a kind of reluctant coach for Johnny and helps him out by clueing him in on the The Seton Way and what to expect from her father. But then..."Oh Johnny!"
The film is stolen routinely by Lew Ayres, the drunken, philosophizing musically adept brother who seems to have given up. As good as he is, Johnny's best friends the Potters, played by Edward Everett Horton and Jean Dixon are worthy of their own spin-off movie.
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