BEFORE: Just a few days left until Valentine's Day, so it's time to bring out some real classic romances. And what's more classic than Tracy and Hepburn? The connection from last night is, Spencer Tracy was in the original "Father of the Bride" film - if you need more tangible linking, Steve Martin was in "The Muppet Movie" with Milton Berle, who was also in "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World" with Tracy.
Catching another break on the TCM roadtrip - the travelogue has pulled into NYC for the weekend, and I've seen a fair number of those films - like "On the Waterfront", "Three Days of the Condor", and "Kramer vs. Kramer". Another one, "The Apartment", is already on the list and I'll watch that next week. I'm taking passes on "42nd Street", "Going My Way", "Wait Until Dark" and "Gloria" - so my list goes down again today, to 263.
THE PLOT: Two extremely strong personalities clash over the computerization of a TV network's research department.
AFTER: According to this film, a network TV station in the 1950's had a kick-ass research department - (as if!) with some real crack info/trivia experts on staff. Hey, maybe I was born too late and missed my calling! But it seemed to be all book-based, and the hook here concerns an efficiency expert (Tracy) who wants to come in and streamline things. Wacky hijinx ensue - so it's kind of like the "30 Rock" of the 1950's.
But what kind of efficiency expert hangs around for 6 months before filing his report? That in itself doesn't seem very efficient. Tracy's character also doesn't have his personal life together, symbolized by his non-matching socks. C'mon, we all know he's going to end up with Hepburn - but her character's been seeing a network executive for seven years, and he hasn't popped the question. In 1957 years, that was evidently an eternity.
That said, it would have been nice if we could have seen SOME reason why she should choose one man over the other. Does she fall for the efficiency expert merely because he's THERE, and the executive is traveling around? Do they bond over their shared love of knowledge/trivia? His ability to cook fried chicken? I never felt like the movie got inside their heads or hearts. There was a filmic shorthand with Tracy and Hepburn, something akin to seeing, say, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie in a film today.
Another point - if the women in the research department knew they were being monitored by an efficiency expert, maybe they should have cut down on the personal calls, and started coming in on time. I'm just sayin'.
Then we've got the issue of this newfangled device called a "computer". It takes up a whole frickin' room - but that's what computers did back then. Bill Gates once said that if auto technology had progressed at the same rate as computer technology, a car would cost $25.00 and get a million miles to the gallon. However, clearly here we've got a screenwriter who has no idea how a computer works. The interfaces in 1957 were nothing like Google, where you could type a question in English and expect the computer to produce a constructive answer. Non-math based questions had to be on coded punch cards, and correct answers were dependent on the proper pre-programming - there was certainly no central database that computers could access for more information.
We do see a Christmas party at a network in 1957, though - which pretty much involved alcohol of all sorts being ingested. Katherine Hepburn could not pretend to be drunk realistically, though - I wasn't buying it. I often wonder about the Christmas parties at NYC ad agencies during the 1960's and 70's, or even behind the scenes at a magazine like Penthouse or Screw - imagine the debauchery! Maybe they just got drunk and sang Christmas carols, who knows?
Also starring Gig Young, Joan Blondell, Dina Merrill.
RATING: 4 out of 10 pink slips
Technicalities:
ReplyDeleteSpencer Tracy's character isn't an efficiency expert: he's a computer scientist and engineer. He's there to computerize the network HQ's various departments...in the movie, payroll and research are the highlights.
The research department and Tracy's assistant spent weeks inputting all of their library's books and references into EMERAC. The end result was a handmade, locally-hosted Wikipedia of sorts.
Yeah, EMERAC used natural-English input that would be pretty hot even today. Even today, filmmakers haven't figured out how to handle a "people operate a computer" scene and make it more interesting than watching paint dry.
Hepburn leaves her longtime boyfriend for Spencer Tracy because the boyfriend is Bill Pullman and the other guy is Spencer Tracy. The character-driven perspective is that the relationship broke due to metal fatigue rather than a crash. It was seven years of Hepburn always taking a backseat to the demands of his career.
The situation isn't so bad that it provokes her to instigate a big fight and then end the relationship. But! The dude left himself in a position where if Hepburn were faced with a choice and asked herself "Is he worth it?" the answer could very well be "Naw." Especially if this answer means she can keep a job that she loves and start something with a new guy with whom there seems to be some potential.
(So in the end: you can destroy your relationship in one weekend by engaging in a hooker-filled boozefest while you're away at a sales convention, or over the course of five years by leaving your wet towel on the bathroom floor every morning.)
I love this movie. It's one of the top five movies in which a computer plays a central role. It was remarkably canny, especially for its time; even today, the best systems and software divvy up a job between the analog stuff that humans do well and the cold calculations and data retrieval that still define the function of all computers.
This look at vintage 50's data processing gear is catnip to a nerd like me. But so is this peek at the 1950's office Christmas party. We are led to believe that the Emperor Nero would have fit in quite well at any office party held at any advertising agency in New York between 1954 and 1966. That's definitely on my list of Places And Times To Visit after I get my time machine working.
Technically, Tracy's character was BOTH a computer engineer and an efficiency expert. He was suggesting that the computer be installed to make the department more efficient.
DeleteHis incessant measuring of the research office could have two meanings - either to study whether the office is laid out in an efficient manner, or to determine how much room was needed for the computer.
His questioning of Hepburn's character with logic problems seems eerily similar to the interviewing of replicants in "Blade Runner", no?
Tell, me, did all room-sized computers in the 1950's have a giant red button that would disable the machine, and was it placed front and center on the top panel, with a giant warning sign saying "Never press this button"? Because that seemed a little odd to me.
Of course they all had big red buttons that made the computer explode. Next you'll tell me you're unaware that there's one giant computer that runs everything in New York, and that you can hack it with your phone so that you get nothing but green lights when you're being chased through the city.
ReplyDeleteComputer scientist or efficiency expert? The former. His degree and credentials are in computer science (if I'm remembering correctly) and every time he speaks of increasing efficiency, he couches it in terms of automation and not process. He designed EMERAC himself and he's selling the advantages of the machine.
The questioning: here's why Tracy is one of the top nerds in movie history. He's having lunch with a happenin' babe. She's got brains, looks, and personality. Annnnd he spends the whole lunch peppering her with logic puzzles. Why? Because this is the Fifties, and he couldn't have spent that time explaining his theory about why "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine" was superior to "Next Generation."
Regarding your other relationship comments: it wasn't so much that Spencer Tracy swept Hepburn off her feet here. It's more like his presence helped her to understand just how little she was getting out of her relationship with her current beau. The movie hits the right points to make this happen: a lonnnnnnnng engagement (indicating that the guy isn't exactly making marriage the #1 priority in his life), routinely canceling dates in favor of meetings and business, a certain resignation in their interactions and a lack of the spark that seems to exist between her and Tracy.
Ah, but that's where the film fell short for me. I didn't see the "spark" between Hepburn and Tracy. He was THERE, hanging around the office, and the other guy was always on a business trip. Is that enough?
DeleteI was dying for a spark, some sign that this guy is a better partner - OK, so they got caught in the rain together, and he cooked her fried chicken. Other than the meeting where he quizzed her knowledge, was that it?
Anyway, the quiz questions were designed to test her suitability for her job, and to see if she could out-think a computer. Did this also serve a dual function as nerd speed-dating?
Other than the flirting in her apartment that rainy night, I'm hard-pressed to remember the movie pointing out why Tracy made a better love interest.
I maintain that the filmmakers were relying on the real-world relationship to fill in the gaps, and didn't do their due diligence in the storytelling department.
Even "Forces of Nature" did a better job in contrasting Maura Tierney's boring fiancée with Sandra Bullock's wild, adventurous free-spirit.
OK, well, of course you're right. Hepburn and Tracy are the "screen relationship" version of Chekhov's Gun. If these two actors are introduced as characters in Act One, they WILL become a couple by the end of the movie. It's impossible for a writer to work around the audience's expectations, so why not embrace it?
ReplyDeleteStill, I never saw their pairing as more than a First Date...so I found it completely believable. Maybe the relationship with Spencer Tracy was going to work out, maybe it wasn't. Either way, splitting with the network executive was the right choice. Again: you can kill a relationship with a woman by sleeping with her sister and/or Mom and do it very quickly, or you can do it through years of carelessly and consistently demonstrating that you've ranked her fairly low on your list of priorities.
I don't think he was quizzing her on her suitability for her job. Remember, he knows that nobody in the research department is losing their jobs.
I think this was just a nerd's version of small talk. My own go-to patter in a first date situation was a captivating little monologue entitled "Deke Slayton's desire and intention was for Pete Conrad, and not Neil Armstrong, to be the first man to walk on the moon."
(No, it never worked.)
(Not even once.)