MovieChat Forums > Woman of the Year (1942) Discussion > Soft Focus

Soft Focus

posted 17 years ago by ShelleyQT
10 replies | jump to latest

My husband and I watched this film last night. We couldn't help noticing that every time they showed Katharine Hepburn, it was shot in soft focus. Even when they showed closeups of Hepburn's and Tracy's faces together, her face would be in soft focus, while his would be normal. It seems the filmmakers wanted to make sure she looked young and beautiful. Personally, I found it distractingly obvious that this was what they were trying to do.

Besides, I think it is obvious that both actors were really a little too old to be playing young newlyweds (not that it's impossible for older people to be newlyweds, obviously). I'm just saying that for that time and place, people usually married for the first time when they were much younger.

I don't think it really matters that they were too old for their roles, but it was annoying that the filmmakers thought it mattered enough that they should try to make her look younger.

[–] MalJMD 17 years ago

I find the soft focus placed on all women [and the pancake make up] maddening.

They're not "too old" for these roles. They're supposed to be grown-ups who have already experienced a great deal in their lives. She's what? Thirty-three and he's forty-one.

[–] tickner2-1 17 years ago

Actually in in the film I think Tess Harding was supposed to be a career woman who presumably never expected to get married - so she was probably supposed to be between 25-30 - and much older than woman of that era .

She wasn't supposed to be a 19 year old

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[–] jopeabody 17 years ago

I HATE the soft focus on all the women. It homogenizes them. It's booooring.

[–] boxerrebellion 9 years ago

Part of it had to do with the makeup available at the time.... it was just the style of the time. Sort of like the really annoying super slow mo action shots now - except I've always found them annoying.

[–] LaLaLaLorelei 15 years ago

Maybe they thought the soft focus would make her face look more conventionally pretty. She did have high, angled cheek-bones and a pointed chin. I personally thought she was a stunning lady, soft focus or none, but you know Hollywood. Their attitude is, "Let's bleach all their hair blonde and implant breasts the size of cantalopes."

Pray that there's intelligent life somewhere up in space 'cos its bugger all down here on Earth.

[–] PretoriaDZ 14 years ago

The soft focus might also have been used as a counterpoint to her character, a hard news reporter/commentator who, as a woman in 1942, might have struck audiences as too hard to be sympathetic. By making her sexy (the movie star introduction shot of her legs panning up to her face), they made you see her as a soft woman first, before she opened her mouth.

I love this movie but the ending with her making such a muck in the kitchen was bad writing but I loved it when Spencer throw the "little colonel" down the back stairs.

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