#44 ‘The Philadelphia Story’
Champagne, Class, and the Rehabilitation of a Woman Who Talked Too Much
The Philadelphia Story (1940) is often praised as a sparkling screwball comedy, a triumph of wit, elegance, and romantic repartee. And sure, it’s got enough zingers to fill a martini glass. But under all the satin and banter lies a cautionary tale for ambitious women everywhere: if you’re too confident, too articulate, or too unwilling to be adored on command, you will be humiliated into submission—preferably by three men at once.
Katharine Hepburn plays Tracy Lord, a patrician goddess with a brain sharper than her cheekbones and a spine straight enough to make the entire male cast deeply uncomfortable. She’s introduced as imperious, self-righteous, and “unforgiving”—because nothing unnerves a man like a woman who expects consistency. She’s about to marry a self-made, slightly boring man, when her alcoholic ex-husband (Cary Grant, twinkle-eyed and casually violent) shows up to win her back with a smirk and some light gaslighting. Cue the class tension, champagne-fueled insults, and sudden moral enlightenment.
Tracy’s fatal flaw? She holds people to standards—including herself. This is presented not as integrity, but as ice. The men around her—her cheating father, her emotionally manipulative ex, and the tabloid reporter with a savior complex—all get to have flaws. Tracy? She has expectations. The horror.
Throughout the film, three men—each representing a different brand of masculine entitlement—circle her like vultures with tuxedos. Dexter (Grant) wants her back but only if she stops being so high-and-mighty. Mike (Jimmy Stewart) wants her to see the poetry in herself, but only after drunkenly pawing at her. George, her fiancé, wants her as a prize—idealized, pedestalized, and ready to be displayed like one of the family’s racehorses.
By the end, Tracy is brought low by a series of emotional interventions masquerading as romantic gestures. She realizes she’s “not human enough,” too “like a goddess,” and what she really needs is to be adored in spite of her imperfections. Which sounds empowering until you realize it’s code for: “Stop holding your boundaries, darling, and let one of us mansplain you into happiness.”
Yes, the script is clever. Yes, the performances are dazzling. Hepburn is radiant even as the film punishes her. Grant is dashing even as he shoves her to the floor in the opening scene—played for laughs, naturally. Stewart is charming, if clearly aware he’s third-string. But the core message never quite sparkles the way the surface does: if a woman dares to be more than an object of affection, she must be taken apart and reassembled into something softer, gentler, and just a little less herself.
3 out of 5 wedding veils
(One for Hepburn's brilliance, dimmed but not extinguished. One for the razor-sharp dialogue. One for Ruth Hussey, the only woman in the film who doesn't fall apart for a man. The missing stars were last seen somewhere in the champagne bucket, drowned in expectations and double standards.)
