The Philadelphia Story

Blog 1: The Philadelphia Story

I thought that this movie was very well done. The Philadelphia Story was a very comical movie about love and relationships. There were many reoccurring themes and aspects that to me were very interesting. I thought that the major themes were the role of women in society, the role of class seen within society and the role of men in relationships.
First, I saw that there were many references throughout this movie about how women should act. There were a couple scenes where the little girl was corrected by her mother because she said, “smell” instead of “stink” or “sock” instead of “strike.” I thought that this was very interesting because during these earlier times, women were expected to act very proper in public. The mother’s job was to make certain that her daughters were always “behaving like ladies” in public. Another scene that reminds me of this pre-conceived notion of women was when Tracy was reading one of the books written by Mike Connor and he asked, “what happens to girls like you that read my books, they think.” It was quite a surprising remark because he of what he intended it to mean. What it said to me was that a woman was not supposed to have a brain that actually thought about anything other than housework or being a good wife. I just thought that this movie had some interesting insight about what a woman’s role in society was supposed to be in that era.
Another theme that I took away from this movie was the necessity for the upper class to live up to a certain lifestyle. They were expected to live extravagantly and as if money was of no concern. There was a funny saying in this movie that was used to describe the upper class, “the privileged class enjoys its privileges.” It was really funny to see how the family acted when the reporters came into their house. To me, they put on a show and they were really fake about their lifestyle and how they acted towards each other. It was funny to see them put on this act, trying to look like a “normal” and “functional” family. This family really valued their “high class” reputation so they put on quite an act to pretend to be this lovely and happy family.
Finally, the last theme that I saw throughout this movie was the interesting role that men played in their relationships with of women. It seemed to have all the stereotypes of how men treated women back in the old days. There were a couple scenes of domestic violence, when women got physically and verbally abused. It made me realize how some men treated women with so little respect back then. The father also has a negative relationship with his daughter, which I found very interesting. It reinforced my belief that a woman was more susceptible to divorce or unhealthy relationships with men if she grew up with an abusive or unstable father figure. It was also interesting to see that the father and mother were divorced similarly to the daughter.
Overall, I thought that this movie not only entertaining but had some interesting perspectives. I have never watched old movies and it was a nice change. It was very fascinating to watch an older movie like this one because not only could you get a real sense of what our culture was like back then, but it also helped me to appreciate how far our society has come today!