I TAKE THIS WOMAN is a movie in search of a plot. No wonder there was so much turmoil in getting this project off the ground. For awhile, it was called "I Re-Take This Woman" when the original director walked off and Woody (one take) VanDyke took his place.
It drags on aimlessly while we're supposed to feel sorry for characters that never come to life. SPENCER TRACY seems hopelessly miscast as a doctor who tends to the poor while his wife (HEDY LAMARR) tries to forget her upper class friends and her unhappy affair with KENT TAYLOR. VERREE TEASDALE is her bubbly friend who seems to be performing in another film, so lively is her work here. But Tracy and Lamarr are never able to give the film the boost it needs to help it rise above a tedious and boring script.
All of the camera angles favor Hedy's beauty and she meets all of these close-ups in fine form. LARAINE DAY has a minor role that she's unable to infuse with any life and others in the supporting cast suffer the same fate, even LOUIS CALHERN as a wealthy business man. The less said about WILLIE BEST the better.
Tracy and Lamarr almost reach a point of divorce, until he realizes that she hasn't betrayed him with Kent Taylor. But the coy ending adds a touch of Frank Capra sentiment to the finale when his loyal lower class clients break into "Auld Lang Syne" when he decides to resume his job as their caretaker.
It doesn't work. Nothing about the film seems real--most of all, Miss Lamarr in all of her "out of this world" splendor trying to bring some sense of reality to a trite script that should never have been produced in the first place.
It drags on aimlessly while we're supposed to feel sorry for characters that never come to life. SPENCER TRACY seems hopelessly miscast as a doctor who tends to the poor while his wife (HEDY LAMARR) tries to forget her upper class friends and her unhappy affair with KENT TAYLOR. VERREE TEASDALE is her bubbly friend who seems to be performing in another film, so lively is her work here. But Tracy and Lamarr are never able to give the film the boost it needs to help it rise above a tedious and boring script.
All of the camera angles favor Hedy's beauty and she meets all of these close-ups in fine form. LARAINE DAY has a minor role that she's unable to infuse with any life and others in the supporting cast suffer the same fate, even LOUIS CALHERN as a wealthy business man. The less said about WILLIE BEST the better.
Tracy and Lamarr almost reach a point of divorce, until he realizes that she hasn't betrayed him with Kent Taylor. But the coy ending adds a touch of Frank Capra sentiment to the finale when his loyal lower class clients break into "Auld Lang Syne" when he decides to resume his job as their caretaker.
It doesn't work. Nothing about the film seems real--most of all, Miss Lamarr in all of her "out of this world" splendor trying to bring some sense of reality to a trite script that should never have been produced in the first place.