I've seen it time and again yet every time it comes on TV, I can't help but watch it. I think the acting is great but the speech that Spencer Tracy gives at the end is just remarkable.
I think Sidney Poitier gave a better speech.
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I can't resist it either. That last scene where Tracy is looking at Hepburn and they are shooting that knowing look at each other, each, I'm sure, thinking about the 25 years they have spent loving each other and what they have meant to each other and knowing at that moment that it's all about to come to and end. I don't know if this has ever happened in American cinema where two performers who are real life partners are playing such a scene in a script. I also can't resist to examine the sets. I have worked in set design and this set was the height of sophisticated in '67. Generally, I don't like 60's interiors, but that house on Claremont Blvd was stunning. The house was pointed out to me once and was in the Twin Peaks area, but they said it was on Claremont Blvd in the movie which is not the same thing.
shareI just watched it on TCM, and in that last scene, I teared up.
And one thing you should know is that I never tear up.
ever.
It just hit me that they wouldn't have but a couple of weeks left, and the tears in her eyes just weren't acting. They were real.
Amazing performances by everybody.
"I'm going crazy. I'm standing here solidly on my own two hands and going crazy."
The difference in SPs speech and STs speech is major. STracy was such an actor that he became the character of Matt and was believable and it was easy to see it was also real to him.
But poitier is always the same person in every role. He was the same in Heat of the Night. He has been playing that same character over and over and it really shows when you see his old movies.
So spencer tracy outshone SP comepletely on speeches.
The reason this is important is Matt's speech is a complete surprise to the audience. But we expect SP to always say the things he did.
I imagine SP got of it, but studios would not let this fine actor just play a regular guy.
Spencer Tracy did it in one shot no mistakes or re-takes in front of the ensemble. Sidney Poitier played to 2 empty chairs when he was supposedly confronting Hepburn and Tracy. He couldn't handle doing it in front of them sitting in front of him.
shareI will go along that Tracy's speech was the most poignant and moving in the film. I don't agree that Sidney is the same in each role. In ITHOTN his Tibb's character was defiant, at times haughty, a little prejudice, and driven not matter who didn't want him to stay on the case. To me considerably different from GWCTD.
shareThere are a lot of fine actors in this film: Tracy, Hepburn, Poitier, Kellaway, Sanford, and I love watching them. I even like the outdated scenes that haven't aged very well: the delivery boy and the black girl dancing out to the truck, the allegedly "hip" couple John and Joey meet at the bar, the car-crash sequence at the drive-in.
But Katharine Houghton is so freaking and irredeemably bad that every time I think I want to watch it, her bloody-awful performance just drives me away. There's a reason that after this movie she got only bit parts punctuated (thankfully) by extended periods of unemployment.
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