Dinner Theater

My exploration of classic films recently brought me to Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, the 1967 film that tackled the subject of interracial marriage. Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn play the parents of a young woman (Katharine Houghton) who has fallen in love just days ago with Sidney Poitier. The couple seeks the blessing of both sets of parents for their wedding.

The acting is the real standout of this movie. Hepburn and Poitier are both fantastic. Tracy plays at nearly the same level. Young Houghton is simply outclassed, but to her credit hangs in there well even though she's never able to really command the screen in their company. Joined by a cast of other skilled actors, they bring a number of memorable scenes.

Less exemplary is the spotty writing. First, there's a rather implausible time pressure put on the entire affair. The couple simply must get married in a few weeks, out of the country, and so the families must give their lessing that very night, or the whole thing is off. What?

Dodgier still, despite this artificial clock, it takes nearly half of the movie's 1:50 run time before any real conflict emerges. Both the mother and, initially, the father of the bride-to-be react to the surprise of their daughter's choice relatively well, considering the time period. A good friend of the family's shows up and pronounces and even more enthusiastic blessing. For a long time, you're left to wonder just when the drama in this drama is really going to arrive.

But just when I was about to write off the movie for being "visionary" in its time only by way of being impossibly optimistic for that time, things started to get more interesting. The father's parents come into the mix and get some more interesting discussions going. The craft of the writing picks up too. Characters weave in and out of rooms at this awkward dinner party, and nearly every possible pairing is given a compelling two-hand scene to play: mother with daughter, father with son, the two fathers, the two mothers, father of the bride and his long time friend, mother of the groom and father of the bride... every last bit of juice is squeezed out of the premise, and rather effectively.

Alas, it trips up again at the end, as Spencer Tracy is saddled with a five minute monologue to wrap up the film. It's a largely expository thing, like an essay being read in front of a class, repeating everything we've just watched. It's "previously, on Guess Who's Coming to Dinner," before we can get to the final resolution of the film.

And yet, while the movie (thankfully) gets more and more dated with each passing year as societal norms progress, I did not find the movie particularly dated in the ways so many decades-old films tend to seem to me. Alright, so there was that 1960s need to have an original song written for your film that gets repeated again and again (and again) in the orchestral score... but the acting, the photography, the way it all came off felt not so different from the way a serious drama would be made today. I'd rate the movie a B-.