6.8 | / 10 |
Users | 4.0 | |
Reviewer | 3.5 | |
Overall | 3.5 |
The sun will sneak by a rooster before sports promoter Mike Conovan (Spencer Tracy) lets opportunity pass him by. So the first time he sees genteel Pat Pemberton (Katharine Hepburn) swing a five-iron, he decides to ink her to a pro contract. Not much meat on her, Mike later says, but whats there is choice. For this choicest of romantic comedies, George Cukor directs, Ruth Gordon and Garson Kanin provide the Oscar®-nominated screenplay, and a deft cast plays various Damon Runyonesque types, including Aldo Ray as a dim-bulb palooka and Charles (Bronson) Buchinski as a tough guy who finds Pat tougher. Sports stars of the day (like Babe Didrikson Zaharias and Gussie Moran) add to the Jocks and Jills fun. Let the games begin!
Starring: Spencer Tracy, Katharine Hepburn, Aldo Ray, William Ching, Sammy White (I)Romance | 100% |
Comedy | Insignificant |
Sport | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.37:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.37:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 Mono (48kHz, 24-bit)
1879 kbps
English SDH
Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region A, B (C untested)
Movie | 3.5 | |
Video | 4.5 | |
Audio | 4.0 | |
Extras | 0.5 | |
Overall | 3.5 |
In late 1951, Katharine Hepburn returned to New York after a long safari in Africa where she recently finished The African Queen, her most successful movie. Author Charles Higham chronicles in his book Kate: The Life of Katharine Hepburn that the actress met with screenwriter Garson Kanin and his wife, fellow scribe and actress Ruth Gordon, about a screenplay centering on a multi-talented female athlete who leaves her fiancé for a sports promoter. Higham says they had "marvelous script conferences." Hepburn boarded a train destined for Los Angeles with the Kanins, whom she entertained while reading from a diary she compiled while making The African Queen. According to Higham, Hepburn prepared for the new picture Pat and Mike by practicing on a tennis court at the Beverly Hills Hotel and on Lakeside golf course. Spencer Tracy was reportedly suffering from depression but Hepburn got him out of his stupor when she told him about the film, which energized him. George Cukor was brought in to direct. Pat and Mike was the seventh collaboration on the big screen for Cukor and Hepburn.
Pat Pemberton (Katharine Hepburn) is a physical-education instructor at the small California university, Pacific Tech, where her fiancé, Collier Weld (William Ching), works as a vice president. Collier is taking Pat in his convertible to a national women's golf tournament. Before competing, Pat is surprised by the sudden appearance of Mike Conovan (Spencer Tracy) and one of his assistants, who sneak in through a window of Pat's motel suite. Mike is a sports promoter who runs his own management firm in New York and is interested in Pat becoming his latest talent acquisition. He offers her a bribe of purposely finishing second but she rebukes him. Pat finishes second anyway but she's out of luck in terms of receiving any money. After he boards the train with his fiancée, Collier turns possessive. This causes Pat to throw her luggage out the window and flee the train. Pat joins Mike and his representatives in New York. Mike also has a talented but uneducated heavyweight prizefighter (Aldo Ray) and a racehorse among his clients. Pat additionally excels at tennis so Mike signs her up for a local tennis tournament. She plays a great set and a half but when Collier appears as a spectator in the middle of the second set, her performance plummets (as often is the case with her fiancé present).
It dawned on me while watching Pat and Mike how much director Barry Levinson and the two screenwriters who penned The Natural (1984) must have been influenced by an important plot element in the Cukor film. Whenever Collier shows up at one one of Pat's tournaments, she either chokes or plays poorly. But when Collier isn't there and Mike is, Pat tends to play great. In The Natural, villainess Memo Paris is a source of bad luck when she's near baseball legend Roy Hobbs (Robert Redford). However, when Roy only notices Iris Gaines (Glenn Close) in the stands, he'll hit a home run instead of striking out.
Pat shows off her calisthenics to Mike.
The Warner Archive Collection's (WAC) release of Pat and Mike is struck from a 4K scan of the original camera negative. The movie appears in its original theatrical aspect ratio of 1.37:1 on this MPEG-4 AVC-encoded BD-50. The image boasts terrific grayscale and crisp black levels. Grain is evenly dispersed throughout the frame. I could notice a nice smattering of grain on Hepburn's face. Print anomalies have been kept to a bare minimum. Warner encodes the feature at an average video bitrate of 34993 kbps.
Warner has provided thirty-three chapters.
Warner has supplied a DTS-HD Master Audio Dual Mono (1879 kbps, 24-bit). The monaural mix is free of any audible hiss, pops, crackles, or tape dropouts. It sounds authentic and appropriately flat. I could make out all spoken words. Golden Age composer David Raksin only wrote about twelve minutes of musical score (or the amount that appears in the film) and it suits the picture very well.
I watched Pat and Mike with the optional English SDH on. They appear in a yellow font. The subs give an accurate transcription of the dialogue. There's a famous line that Kanin and Gordon wrote that ends with "cherce" but it's rendered as "choice." The former is supposedly slang for the latter as "choice" appeared in at least one original review that a critic quoted from the film.
Pat and Mike is a breezy sports comedy/romance that isn't as good as it could have been. The film often lacks tension except for the climax. I prefer the underrated Without Love (1945) over it in some ways. Look for a young Charles Bronson in the third act (he's credited here as Charles Buchinski). If you own the Warner DVD box set, Spencer Tracy & Katharine Hepburn: The Signature Collection, like I do, you'll want to hang on to Adam's Rib and the documentary, The Spencer Tracy Legacy: A Tribute By Katharine Hepburn, as neither has been released on BD. The WAC disc delivers an excellent restored transfer and serviceable lossless audio in classic mono. There are no extras. While Pat and Mike isn't a great movie, this is still a MUST OWN for Tracy and Hepburn aficionados.
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