The Battle of the Sexes is such an antiquated trope and an often useless one in exploring complicated gender dynamics. Typically and historically in art, politics, and culture, it presupposes many notions of gender we now know to be untrue. But also it implies a kind of shrugging apathy with the actual harms of patriarchy and the goals of feminism. And all of that is right there in the open in probably the greatest ‘Battle of the Sexes” movie of classic Hollywood, Adam’s Rib -even the title centres the man via the old Biblical concept of woman being merely an extension of man. It is incredibly simplistic, droll, even naive -and yet it also is charming and fun, as it uses a courtroom setting to stage its great and not particularly serious debate.
This is due to both the talent in front of and behind the camera. Adam’s Rib was written for the then well-established star partnership of Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn by the writing (and marital) partnership of Garson Kanin and the inimitable Ruth Gordon (in later years of course one of the great elder Hollywood stars). It is based on an unbelievably bizarre true story about people personally known to Gordon and Kanin: a married couple who were both attorneys, who represented respectively actor Raymond Massey and actress Adrienne Allen during their divorce, only to later divorce each other and marry these respective clients (to be fair each of these new marriages lasted more than three decades until death). This latter part of the story was probably too taboo for a movie in 1949, but Gordon and Kanin realized quite rightly how good an idea it was for a script, and especially if tailored to their good friends Tracy and Hepburn.
Indeed, it fit them like a glove, the exactingly matched combativeness and verbal sparring, and the clear sexual chemistry borne out of these. To make the piece dramatically jucier at the cost of making it more legally difficult, the writers decided to turn it into an attempted murder case rather than a divorce proceeding. And unlike a recent legal film like Anatomy of a Fall it opens with no ambiguity as to who committed the crime and how. Judy Holliday, appearing in this film as a trial-run for the movie adaptation of her Broadway play Born Yesterday (for which she would eventually win an Oscar), plays Doris Attinger, who follows her husband Warren (Tom Ewell) to a strange apartment where her suspicions about him having an affair are confirmed true, and she wildly fires a pistol in the room, nicking Warren in the shoulder while his lover Beryl (Jean Hagen of Singin’ in the Rain fame) escapes unscathed. Tracy’s Adam Bonner (“Pinky” to his wife), as an assistant district attorney, is assigned the case for the prosecution, while Hepburn’s Amanda Bonner, with deep feminist principles of women’s equality, takes up Doris’s defence after reading about the incident in the paper.
There is a degree to which the time this movie came out in –the late 1940s- informs its very pedestrian politics around gender and feminism. Amanda’s favourite thing when discussing such issues is to point out the societal double-standard for men when it comes to adultery, not just to Adam but even the women in her law office, who consider a man having an affair as a mere happenstance, but women having an affair as something terrible. Her agenda to prove this point in a public sphere is seen to be what motivates Amanda to seek out Doris’s defence –though more interestingly the idea of going up against her husband in court also clearly thrills her. The script is curious in both framing Amanda as a parody of first-wave feminism, and yet her critiques as being rooted in valid notions of inequality. It is a safe, playful way of raising awareness, even if the overhanging silliness to the premise combined with a late film development exposing the thinness of Amanda’s argument has the effect of diluting the the meaningful social commentary.
Because it all comes in a very inorganic way, as irrelevant factors in a case that doesn’t have nothing to do with broader social gender conventions but isn’t directly about them. Essentially, Amanda is using issues of pervasive sexism to defend Doris’s right to shoot her husband. Considering this, it is a cartoon of a trial that Adam is absolutely flummoxed by -Amanda brings in witness after witness unrelated to the case testifying to general experiences with misogyny in their everyday lives, she even has a woman weightlifter pick Adam up and lift him into the air. Of course it is all intended as outrageous comedy, the case very quickly disappearing in the midst of a larger gender debate, but the scale of unseriousness does filter disproportionately into how Amanda is perceived -the party who does take it into these deeper waters, as Adam is framed all throughout in a more sensible light. In their relationship he is clearly the straight man -less fun or passionate than Amanda, but also implicitly more reasonable. It creates a bit of a double-standard of its own. The seeming neutrality of Adam modestly defending the status quo, albeit with occasional goodwill gestures towards Amanda’s points, is the key gender politic the movie wishes to express -challenging cultural gender discrepancies only by platforming them in a battle of the sexes context that intentionally drowns them in a petty contest of personalities. It’s plausible to come out of the movie with Amanda’s feminist ideals, but far more likely to read them as mere activist preoccupation that Adam is fully justified in wishing to temper. An image of feminism on par with suffragette Mrs. Banks in Mary Poppins.
Still, the film is directed by George Cukor, well-known for his “women’s films” and popularity as a collaborator among various major actresses of the era. And it’s clear he really knows how to utilize Hepburn’s talents, allows her full freedom to be flamboyant, as well as giving ample attention to Holliday -whom he would later direct in her Oscar-winning performance. For as flimsy as her case is, you do want her to win it -Holliday plays the part very endearingly while Ewell is just a complete jerk. David Wayne plays a snarky songwriter friend of the Bonners, not-so-secretly in love with Amanda. He is an asshole too, especially when he tries to make a move during a rift in the marriage, but his witty commentary over footage of a holiday the Bonners had taken together is quite funny. That film is there to showcase the warmth and tenderness of their relationship in contrast to the combativeness that characterizes much of the movie. Also to play off the sweetness of Tracy’s and Hepburn’s genuine romance (they were of course never publicly together during their careers, even though their off-screen relationship was the biggest open secret in Hollywood).
And it is honestly very endearing -the intricacies of their dynamic are so immediately charming and there’s a sense of fun to their romance that feels distinct from most other on-screen pairings of the time, especially in that home movie that no other two actors could convey so comfortably. They bounce off each other enormously well and each know just how to play the tone of the film. Even where the messaging runs aground it can be delightful to see Tracey take a bite out of a licorice gun, or to see Hepburn shoot him a wicked grin or sticking her tongue out. The ending features a great demonstration of Tracey’s acting prowess as he showcases his ability to cry authentically on cue to prove a point. There’s good humour in it -even in those scenes where they seem to be the most divided, poised for a divorce -the sentiment is never too dour. That is likely because Gordon and Kanin wrote it with a spirited kind of collaboration -it can be easy to read Amanda and Adam as avatars for these writers, who by all account had a very healthy relationship themselves up to her death in 1984. It adds another layer of earnest affability to the movie, an exercise in gender politics by two people who have the utmost respect for one another.
The movie attempts to be very even-handed in its conclusion, both Adam and Amanda being shown up by the other. Amanda wins the case -by convincing the judge and jury to imagine the genders of all parties were reversed in a bit that is perhaps its own indictment on the gender bias of the judicial system: they all realize they would totally let a man get away with attempted murder so under this lens they have no choice but to give the woman the same temporary male privilege. But Adam ultimately wins the argument, and it essentially ends in a draw, with the couple reconciled and Adam considering a run for office that Amanda too starts to ponder. Cukor and Gordon and Kanin in letting Tracy and Hepburn’s rapport speak for itself, manage to present with this movie an ideal image in terms of gender balance -they are equal partners in every sense. Of course, this does nothing in service of the greater systemic issues addressed by the film earlier, which are resolved in that very movie way by proxy by the one legal case.
I think Adam’s Rib would stand a better chance of making an effective statement if the subject of the case were less extravagant. Because the choice was made to go for the most dramatic option, and to not imbue the case with any ambiguity (we see the crime play out fairly objectively), it renders so much of the rhetoric hard to take seriously. The film could have been just as funny if it were a domestic case or a contract case, or any kind of case (short of sexual assault obviously) where women are and have always been discriminatingly treated by the justice system. In spite of this though, the cleverness of the script and the charismatic pureness of Tracy and Hepburn’s performances, makes it a good time. Perhaps not the landmark of feminist film or socially conscious cinema it might look like, but irresistible in its own way nevertheless.
Support me on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/JordanBosch
Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/Jordan_D_Bosch
Letterboxd: https://letterboxd.com/jbosch
Comments
Post a Comment