Monday at the Movies - January 23, 2012

Welcome to the fourth weekly installment of “Monday at the Movies,” in which we find ourselves once more pigeonholed into reviewing movies that begin with the same letter. This edition of “Monday at the Movies” is brought to you by the letter “A.”

Adam’s Rib (1949) – I’ll not waste much time here and begin by saying that Adam’s Rib is one of my all-time favorite movies, and it’s easily the greatest of the nine films Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn made together. It’s also an extremely progressive picture, anticipating much of the women’s lib movement as well as advancing the cause of equality of the sexes long before the country at large embraced those ideas. Hepburn and Tracy play married attorneys Amanda and Adam Bonner, who find themselves on opposite sides of a case in which a woman attempted to shoot her philandering husband. The chemistry between the two is unindictable, as usual, but the Ruth Gordon/Garson Kanin screenplay is solid, witty in all the right places but genuine and earnest in the moments when the relationship of the Bonners is tested by the case. On this latest rewatch (I’ve seen this film dozens of times since discovering it back in high school), I realized just how frequently the scene gets stolen, and surprisingly it’s not Judy Holliday who does the stealing. It’s David Wayne as Kip, the flamboyant musician who lives across the hall and harbors a strange infatuation with Amanda; the highlight scene of the whole film is easily when Kip performs his new song “Farewell, Amanda” for the Bonners, only one of whom is receptive. But it’s the relationship between Hepburn and Tracy that keeps me coming back to this film, because the way they play off each other is so pitch-perfect that it’ll make even the most embittered cynic feel romantic.

Ayn Rand and the Prophecy of Atlas Shrugged (2011) – I believe this is the first nonfiction film I’ve reviewed for this site, and it almost didn’t happen until the DVD release. While there was never any doubt that I’d be seeing this movie at some point (Atlas Shrugged being my favorite book of all time – and there go the readers), it took two free tickets to one of the very limited screenings to get there. Chris Mortensen’s documentary is music to the ears of Rand’s disciples, poison to those who despise her work, and downright antithetical to those who’ve never read her stuff yet loathe her anyway. The documentary begins with a biographical sketch, delves full-force into the composition and publication of Atlas Shrugged and the attempts to film it, and concludes with an overview of the Rand resurgence in our culture today. The title, however, is a bit misleading; I went in expecting a profile on the ways in which Atlas Shrugged anticipated today’s economic/political scene, but what I got was more of an overview. It’s a good introduction to new initiates in the Objectivist school of thought or even for those curious what all the hoopla is about, but for those who have done a fair amount of reading on the subject (as, in all honesty, I have) there isn’t much new here. Of particular interest: Scene-stealer Al Ruddy reveals just how close he came to producing an Atlas Shrugged movie after The Godfather, right down to locking in Clint Eastwood and Faye Dunaway (perfect casting). While worth a look, this documentary doesn’t introduce much to the conversation surrounding the Objectivist revival; the really good stuff is in the last fifteen minutes, leading me to hope for a “sequel” of sorts exploring those matters in greater depth.

That does it for this week’s edition of “Monday at the Movies.” We’ll see you here next week!