Guess Who's Coming to Dinner

Dir: Stanley Kramer

1967

*****

Stanley Kramer's Guess Who's Coming to Dinner is a masterpiece and I don't use the term lightly. It was a huge first in the history of cinema. The first mainstream film to tackle the huge taboo of interracial relationships and the first film on the subject to be universally excepted by the majority of viewers. It is amazing to think that interracial relationships (marriage and sexual), were still illegal in many states in America while the movie was being filmed. Interracial relationships were only legalised across the country two weeks after filming and six months before the film was released. It's an intelligent and beautifully crafted film, dealing with a subject that would have the majority of the country examining their own prejudices and in some cases, ignorance. Who better to tell the story than two of the biggest, dependable and respected names in Hollywood. Stanley Kramer really needed the weight that only Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn could bring to the film and this was understood through friendship and mutual respect and because the story needed to be told. In many respects, casting Tracy and Hepburn was the easy bit, although Kramer had worked with Sidney Poitier before he had a tough time convincing others that he was the man for the job. He certainly proved himself right, although Poitier would often get so star struck by Tracy and Hepburn, who he saw as giants, that he would do a lot of his own scenes alone with Kramer once everyone else had left. Tracy and Hepburn were both nominated for Oscars for their brilliant performances, Poitier was not and although he was good, I think that's probably fair. The whole cast are good, Cecil Kellaway is great light-relief and an interesting voice of reason to a faithless family as Monsignor Mike Ryan and Isabel Sanford is wonderful as the family's black maid, against the relationship, tackling a out dated way of thinking from a totally different angle. Katharine Houghton was perfect for the role in her acting debut, she got the job after her aunt, Hepburn, suggested her to Kramer. I've always thought that Roy E. Glenn deserves a lot of respect for being somewhat of a stooges in one of the cinema's greatest films but nominations aside, it is the beautiful Beah Richards, who plays Poitiers gentle mother, who I believe really steals the show. It's not just the performances that make it a classic though, it's the way Kramer handles stereotypes and often turns them around that make the film so great. This is down to the wonderful creative talent of one of my personal favorite screen writers, William Rose. Unfortunately, Spencer Tracy, who died just two weeks after the films completion. Tracy would never see the film and Hepburn later admitted that she had never and would never watch it as she knew it would be too much for her to bare, it being the last of nine films the secret lovers would collaborate on. It's one hell of a swansong though and easily one of his best performances, especially considering how gravely ill he was during the filming. Comedy and drama don't always go hand in hand but when they work, they really work and this is probably the best example of that. Like I said, a true masterpiece.