217. Adam's Rib (1949)

Directed By George Cukor

Synopsis

A couple of lawyers, meaning two lawyers who are married, take opposite sides of the same case when a woman shoots up her husband when she finds him with a lover. Hilarity ensues.

Review

This film is worth it for one reason, the marital fights. If you are married or live with someone as if you were then you know what fights are like and very rarely does film show them as they really are. And this is kind of it, at least in my experience. And for that this film is great.

Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn have the chemistry that comes from being the closest of friends and you can tell that these are two actors that love each-other and have had their number of tiffs. The performances are just great.

Then there is also the feminist element to the film which is dealt with in a more interesting and open way than in most films, that adds another layer of interest to the film. It isn't the funniest of comedies or the best of films but these are reasons enough to watch it.

Final Grade

8/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

The defendant, Doris Attinger, when narrating to Amanda Bonner her version of the events on the day she shot her husband, describes recognizable symptoms of a dissociative episode. These include a divorcement from the reality of her actions and even psychogenic amnesia concerning her actual wounding of her husband. Given that, one might have expected Amanda to ask the jury for a verdict of not-guilty-by-reason-of-insanity, because the defendant had been seized by an irresistible impulse.

Get it all on youtube, here's the first part: