The Heat of the Dinner Party

The other night, my Dearly Beloved and I watched Guess Who's Coming to Dinner? on DVD, starring Sidney Poitier, Spencer Tracy, and Katherine Hepburn.

Aside from the fact that my Dearly Beloved described Mr Poitier as "sex on a stick", the thing that struck me most about this movie was its disarming frankness on issues such as sex and race relations. Granted, the film was made in 1967, at the height of the "swinging sixties", and granted also that matters such as sex and race relations were the point of the film, the unabashed fashion in which this film tackles these contentious subjects is both refreshing and captivating. And let us bear in mind that the civil rights movement, and the upheavals of the end of segregation, were still being played out in America at that time, leaving millions with raw and anguished sensitivities.

The plot of the film is simple enough: the daughter of two wealthy, white liberal parents returns home from a holiday in Hawaii, bringing with her a man she has met while away, and with whom she has fallen in love. Simple enough, except the man turns out to be black, a fact that confronts the parents with their own prejudice. At first, they try and pretend that they are concerned for the welfare of the young couple, and the hostility they will face on the matter of inter-race relationships. All too soon, however, it is shown that what really disturbs them is the fact that their lovely young daughter wants to marry a talented, intelligent, black man.

There's a terrific scene in which the mother (Hepburn) and the father (Tracy) are contemplating the situation. Hepburn laughs wryly and says something to the effect of: "We raised our daughter not to be prejudiced, to not see any difference between black people and white. We taught her that folks who do are sometimes hateful, mostly ignorant, but always wrong. We just forgot to tell her not to fall in love with a negro."

Of course, the difference between their pretensions and their actual attitudes is illustrated by the fact that they have a black cook/housekeeper. But it is in this character that we also get to see another dimension to prejudice. Because of all the people you would expect to be on the young black man's side, it would be the black housekeeper; and yet she is immediately hostile to him, and sustains that hostility throughout the film. Indeed, there's a brilliant scene in which she gives him a piece of her mind, informing him that she knows what his "game" is: that he is some "smooth talking" hustler looking to exploit a vulnerable and naive young woman in order to get "above himself". Her prejudice is the prejudice of learned helplessness, of accepting that there is a "natural order" to existence and that anyone who breaks the conventions of that order must be immediately "pulled into line".

The young couple are played by Poitier and Katherine Houghton. And they, too, have their failings. The daughter is to some extent quite self-involved, acting on impulse without consideration for the feelings of others, and simply expecting that they will fall in line with her plans. And Poitier, while pretending to be mindful of the sensitivities of the situation, in fact backs Hepburn and Tracy into a corner by delivering a rather self-serving ultimatum. In exploring all these foibles, the film is not being nihilistic or cynical; on the contrary, it is simply reflecting on the fact that prejudice is about more than just race bigotry - it is the assumption that other people will respond in certain ways on the basis of how we have defined who they are.

And the counterpoint that illustrates this principle occurs in the figure of the old Irish Monsignor, a long-time friend of the daughter's family. You would expect this figure to be an unreconstructed racist; afterall, the Irish in America were noted for their hostility to African-Americans, a hostility extending back to the so-called "draft riots" during the American Civil War, when Irish mobs in New York lynched blacks en masse. But it is the Monsignor who unhesitatingly and unconditionally accepts and welcomes the young couple's relationship, overthrowing the ancient stereotype; because, of course, it would have been both a stereotype and racist to have assumed he would be racist on account of being Irish.

I won't spoil things and reveal the denouement, suffice to say that Spencer Tracy delivers one of the most brilliant soliloquys in film history at the end. There is little to wonder that this film was nominated for 10 Academy Awards; what is inconceivable is that it didn't win all 10 - unlike, say, that piece of melodramatic tripe that was Titanic, and which ended up winning a swag. On a personal note, I spent the whole film looking at Spencer Tracy and thinking: "He looks like my father". Naturally, my Dearly Beloved, being the sensitive and sweet-natured being she is, remarked that Spence, in his appearance and attitude, reminded her of Yours Truly!

Postscript: One poignant aspect of Guess Who's Coming to Dinner was that, in certain scenes, it was possible to detect signs of the Parkinson's Disease that was to afflict Katherine Hepburn's later years: the involuntary shaking of the head or hands. And yet she carried off the role with great poise, charm, warmth, and humour. At one stage, watching her, I said: "Gosh, she's beautiful!" And not because she looked beautiful, but because, in her character and in the signs of the disease that was only then just emerging, she conveyed the terrible beauty and dignity of life and being.

Talk to you soon,

BB

Quote for the Day: Terrific - I'm married to a combination of Spencer Tracy and Homer Simpson. (My Dearly Beloved, talking about Guess Who)