Hollywood's ability to conjure up a bittersweet small town (on the studio back lot, to be sure) has rarely been on better display than in Alice Adams, a gentle adaptation of a Booth Tarkington novel. For that matter, Katharine Hepburn rarely had a better chance to radiate her early youthful glow. She plays the title character, a lonely misfit who tries--too hard--to fit in with the snooty debutantes in her class-conscious town. Fred MacMurray is the suitor who miraculously feels comfortable in the front-porch swing of the faded Adams home. In the exquisitely timed comedy of MacMurray's miserable dinner with Alice's family, director George Stevens displays the tools he learned directing Laurel and Hardy two-reelers, and the sequnce becomes a funny-painful classic of social embarrassment. Hepburn's performance, whether Alice is chattering pretentiously or briefly lowering her guard and revealing her loneliness, is simply incandescent. --Robert Horton
Alice Adams was cheerful! You have to stop over this movie! A surprising performance by Katharine Hepburn & Fred MacMurray make Alice Adams a "have got to call up" movie!The staggering cast includes Katharine Hepburn, Fred MacMurray, Fred Stone, Evelyn Venable, Frank Albertson. This cast just make Alice Adams the more staggering!
No comments:
Post a Comment