Amazon.com Essentials:
Spencer Tracy's last performance was in this well-meaning,
handsome film by Stanley Kramer about a pair of white parents (Tracy
and Katharine Hepburn) trying to make sense of their daughter's
impending marriage to an African American doctor (Sidney Poitier). The
film has been knocked over the years for padding conflict and stoking
easy liberalism by making Poitier's character in every socioeconomic
sense a good catch: But what if Kramer had made this stranger a
factory worker? Would the audience still find it as easy to accept a
mixed-race relationship? But there's no denying the drawing power of
this movie, which gets most of its integrity from the stirring
performances of Tracy and Hepburn. When the former (who had been so
ill that the production could not get completion insurance) gives a
speech toward the end about race, love, and much else, it's impossible
not to be affected by the last great moment in a great actor's life
and career. --Tom Keogh
Amazon.com Essentials:
Spencer Tracy's last performance was in this well-meaning,
handsome film by Stanley Kramer about a pair of white parents (Tracy
and Katharine Hepburn) trying to make sense of their daughter's
impending marriage to an African American doctor (Sidney Poitier). The
film has been knocked over the years for padding conflict and stoking
easy liberalism by making Poitier's character in every socioeconomic
sense a good catch: But what if Kramer had made this stranger a
factory worker? Would the audience still find it as easy to accept a
mixed-race relationship? But there's no denying the drawing power of
this movie, which gets most of its integrity from the stirring
performances of Tracy and Hepburn. When the former (who had been so
ill that the production could not get completion insurance) gives a
speech toward the end about race, love, and much else, it's impossible
not to be affected by the last great moment in a great actor's life
and career. --Tom Keogh
