An excellent Hollywood chamber drama. Cary Grant plays an investor who dreams of saving enough money for early retirement, and then discovering his real purpose in the world. He's set to marry the daughter of a banking tycoon for whom the accumulation of wealth is everything. Almost completely set within the family's sprawling mansion, the film is essentially composed of two extended set-pieces consisting of Grant's efforts to gain the father's marriage blessing and the ensuing New Year's Eve celebration. Grant gradually learns that his fiancée is very similar to her father, but the other sister (Katharine Hepburn) finds in him a kindred spirit, and a drunkard brother (Lew Ayres) encourages their budding infatuation. There's quite a lot of pleasant humor, but also a palpable sense of deep-seated resentment and stifled dreams that play out against a well-defined family dynamic. Most beautiful are the scenes set within a rustically designed room—an escape from the father's unwavering stoicism—viewed by the estranged characters as a revivifying place where the real living happens, divorced as it is from crippling bourgeois expectations. Cukor's economical direction makes the most of the geography of several rooms and Donald Ogden Stewart's screenplay is particularly attuned to the broken relationship between the old-fashioned father and Hepburn's free-thinking dreamer, as incisively drawn here as in The Philadelphia Story. Highly recommended.
