Rent Adam's Rib (1949)

An unbelievably modern, perfect comedy of manners - Adam's Rib review by BS

Miles and miles ahead of it's time. The tightest, sharpest script. Fantastic performances all round. An unbelievably modern take on female equality that makes a lot of new films look oafish. Outstanding.

Battle of the Sexes, Played with Style: Hepburn and Tracy at Their Witty Best - Adam's Rib review by griggs

Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy could argue over a shopping list and make it compelling, so watching them spar in Adam’s Rib is pure delight. Their chemistry crackles—two pros fencing with wit rather than swords—as marriage and morality go head-to-head in the courtroom. Hepburn, as sharp as ever, makes feminism look effortless decades before the idea was fashionable.

Judy Holliday, though, is the real “what if” here. She’s wonderful in her few scenes, all warmth and comic instinct, but the script keeps her on the sidelines when she could’ve stolen the show. Still, it’s a lively film—clever, cheeky, and surprisingly modern in how it frames equality as both ideal and inconvenience.

The verdict? Not quite a knockout, but a fair fight. Smart, funny, and far more progressive than a 1949 comedy had any right to be.

Comedy Drama. - Adam's Rib review by Steve

My view is that Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn are not great comic actors, though they did have a run of hits together in the '40s and '50s. She is too strident, and he is a touch menacing for lighter roles. But this is their best comedy and those traits actually help their performances this time.

It's not the funniest sitcom, and much of the humour is at the expense of its lower class support characters from the point of view of the Manhattan elite. But it is an interesting contemporary battle-of-the-sexes review of women's rights which mostly stands up today. There's more drama than screwball.

 A mother of three (Judy Holliday) has shot and injured her unfaithful husband.  Tracy is the public prosecutor in charge of the case, but his lawyer-wife (Hepburn) defends the accused, enraged by the gender hypocrisy of attitudes to adultery. And she won't back down, no matter how furious her husband gets.

There's a fun setting among the postwar Manhattan cocktail and dinner party set. They even have a foppish neighbour who drops in to play their piano and sing a Cole Porter number! But, George Cukor hasn't the Lubitsch touch, and the comedy fails to get off the page. Still, the sexual politics remain of interest.