Too smart for love
Movie | |
---|---|
German title | Too smart for love |
Original title | Without love |
Country of production | United States |
original language | English |
Publishing year | 1945 |
length | 111 minutes |
Rod | |
Director | Harold S. Bucquet |
script | Donald Ogden Stewart |
production | Lawrence Weingarten |
music | Bronislau caper |
camera | Karl friend |
cut | Frank Sullivan |
occupation | |
|
Too clever for love (Original title: Without Love ) is an American comedy film with Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn from 1945. The play Without Love (1942) by Philip Barry served as a literary model .
action
During World War II in 1944, scientist Pat Jamieson travels from Chicago to Washington, DC to work on a secret project. On behalf of the War Ministry , he is to develop an oxygen mask for fighter pilots that enables them to fly at altitudes of up to 12,000 meters. Pat is a stranger in Washington looking for an apartment. In the evening he and his little Cairn Terrier bring home a drunk man named Quentin Ladd. Quentin lets him spend the night in the house of his widowed cousin Jamie, who wants to rent out the house and its inventory. Jamie's basement is the perfect place to set up a secret laboratory. When Jamie arrives the next morning, Pat poses as her new caretaker. Jamie later learns that Pat is a scientist and that his father was her father's friend. Therefore he is allowed to stay for the time being.
The following night, Pat sleepwalked around the house. His dog runs after him and wakes him up. Pat sits down at a piano and plays Debussy's Clair de Lune . Jamie hears him playing and is moved to tears. She keeps him company and they tell each other about their lives. Jamie's husband was killed in a riding accident. She still loves him so much that she cannot imagine marrying another man. Pat once fell in love with a girl in Paris who turned out to be extremely selfish. So he never wants to fall in love again. Although her real estate agent, Kitty Trimble, has found someone interested in the property in Paul Carrell, Jamie lets Pat stay with her during her absence. As luck would have it, Paul is an old acquaintance of Pat. In contrast to his sober friend, Paul never misses a flirt.
When Jamie returns, she persuades Pat into a marriage of convenience . In this way they could live and research together without being bothered by feelings for one another. They spend their wedding day together in the basement to test Pat's oxygen mask in an air pressure chamber. When they want to go to bed in the evening, Pat barricades himself in his bedroom. Sleepwalking, however, he leaves the room and ends up in Jamie's bed while she gets something to drink. When Jamie notices him, she falls out of bed in shock. She only calms down when Pat assures her that he is a sleepwalker. The next day, Jamie takes Paul on a trip in a carriage. Convinced that Jamie doesn't love her husband, Paul eventually gives her a kiss. Jamie rejects him and admits her feelings for Pat.
In Chicago, Pat is said to present his oxygen mask to the public for the first time. Jamie decides to travel with him. On the train they share a sleeping compartment and Jamie tries to be more feminine than usual. She also tells him that Paul has kissed her. Jamie wants to celebrate her birthday with Pat at her hotel in Chicago. Because of a misunderstanding, Jamie becomes jealous and leaves early. Pat stays in Chicago and successfully tests his invention in front of scientists. Meanwhile, Jamie meets with Paul. In a pub where Quentin proposes marriage to Kitty and dumps his fiancée Edwina, Jamie meets Pat's old flame. When Pat returns to Washington, he visits Paul in his apartment. Jealously, he searches the apartment for Jamie. However, he only finds the broken heel of a woman's shoe and returns home. Here Jamie tries, seductively in an extravagant dress, to charm him, which Pat doesn't like at all. Jamie admits that she almost cheated on him with Paul. As they both talk about the best way to get a divorce, they realize how much they love each other. There is no longer any talk of divorce.
background
After the successful screwball comedy Woman of the Year ( Woman of the Year , 1942) and the melodrama The Whole Truth ( Keeper of the Flame , 1942), which turned out to be a flop, was to smart for the love of the third joint film by Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn . Philip Barry's template Without Love was in 1942 on Broadway with Hepburn and Elliott Nugent premiered in the lead roles. Barry had written the piece exclusively for Hepburn as previously with his stage success it The Philadelphia Story had done that as The Philadelphia Story ( The Philadelphia Story , 1940) with Hepburn, Cary Grant and James Stewart was also made into a movie. MGM bought the rights to Without Love for $ 265,000, whereupon Donald Ogden Stewart adapted the piece for the big screen like The Night Before the Wedding . Supporting actor Keenan Wynn had previously been on stage mainly in New York. Hepburn and Tracy knew him from theater performances and ultimately made sure that he got the role of Hepburn's film cousin. Lucille Ball , the quick-witted in the film as Hepburn's real estate agent Kitty can be seen, had already in Hepburn's RKO film Stage Door ( Stage Door played a supporting role, 1937). She was later signed by MGM, but initially made rather insignificant films.
Filming took place in the MGM studios from mid-October to mid-December 1944. They were actually supposed to start in November 1943, but Hepburn and director Harold S. Bucquet had already realized another project with Drachensaat at the time. Director Bucquet's last film turned out to be too clever for love . He died of cancer in 1946.
Too smart for love premiered in New York on March 22, 1945 . The reviews have generally been good, but not euphoric. The film nevertheless became one of the most successful films of the year in the United States . In Germany , the film comedy was shown on television for the first time on October 18, 1987 by ARD . In 2007 it was released on DVD.
Reviews
Bosley Crowther of the New York Times pointed out "some gaps and weaknesses" in the film. Above all, the plot of Without Love flows predominantly on “quick-witted words” and is “only condensed by means of quickly borrowed links”; the “nervous” scenic transitions are often sudden and noticeable. Still, Too smart for love is "very amusing", which is primarily due to "the two great main actors".
For the lexicon of international film , Zu Klug für die Liebe was a comedy about the change from a marriage of reason to love, staged with a "precise dialogue wit." The two main actors are “perfectly coordinated” and, together with the “weird supporting characters and pleasantly reserved gags”, turned the film into “charming entertainment” that offered “space for contemplative moments”. "Spencer Tracy [...] plays here as vividly as rarely," said Cinema .
Web links
- Too clever for love in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Without Love at Turner Classic Movies (English)
- Too clever for love at cinema.de
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d Without Love (1945) - Notes. In: Turner Classic Movies . Retrieved October 22, 2019 .
- ↑ Margarita Landazuri: Without Love (1945) - Articles. In: Turner Classic Movies . Retrieved October 22, 2019 .
- ↑ Bosley Crowther : Without Love (1945) . In: The New York Times , March 23, 1945. Retrieved March 30, 2014. It says u. a. In the original: "[T] he action chiefly flows on nimble words, [...] the plot thickens only by virtue of some quickly borrowed glue. […] [T] the nervous transitions are […] abrupt ”. As a conclusion, Crowther formulates: “[D] there are weaknesses in spots,“ Without Love ”is really most amusing. And that goes for its bright particular stars. "
- ↑ Too smart for love. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed October 22, 2019 .
- ↑ Too smart for love. In: Cinema . Hubert Burda Media , accessed on October 22, 2019 .