The Philadelphia Story
Let's celebrate February 14th in a slightly offbeat way, with a classic screwball comedy by George Cukor and a tormented ride through Charles Bukowski's youth by Barbet Schroeder. In the former, an infernal trio (Katharine Hepburn, Cary Grant and James Stewart) try to untangle their feelings, while in the latter, a pair of magnificent losers (Mickey Rourke and Faye Dunaway) are consumed in the City of Angels. In both, love and alcohol compete to turn heads.
Tracy's ex-husband tries everything to prevent her remarriage. Will he succeed? The director's fifth film with Hepburn, this dazzling comedy of remarriage confirmed Cukor's reputation as a great director of actresses and a master of this famous genre in American cinema.
George Cukor
The son of Hungarian immigrants born in New York in 1899, George Cukor tried amateur theater as a child. After the First World War, he began a career as a Broadway show director. He then moved to Hollywood, where he made his first films in the early 1930s. The producer David O. Selznick involved him in a number of major projects for which he made a decisive contribution, even though he was not the actual director: Gone with the Wind and The Wizard of Oz. As the years went by and contracts came in, he specialized in comedy, where he turned out to be a great director of actors - and perhaps even more of actresses, notably Greta Garbo and Katharine Hepburn. Although he had to remain discreet about it for most of his career, Cukor was one of the first Hollywood filmmakers to reveal his homosexuality, to which his films sometimes make discreet allusions. Although his filmography fluctuated somewhat from the 1960s, he achieved one of his greatest successes during this decade with My Fair Lady.
