Best movie of this year hands down!

Absolutely Fantastic

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

During WWII there was a housing shortage in Washington, DC, and that's what sets the plot in motion in Without Love. Jamie Rowan (Hepburn), a fairly well-off widow, advertises for a caretaker for her Washington home (she also has a place in the country) and Pat Jamison (Tracy), a scientist working on an aviation invention for the government (but with no skill at taking care of the house) moves in. Both these people have been deeply hurt by love, she by the death of her husband, he by rejection from a woman he loved. They decide on a marriage "without love" because they want companionship without emotional entanglement. Lucille Ball and Keenan Wynn play another couple, Carl Esmond is a man attempting to romance Kate; Patricia Morison plays an attractive bitch.I guess the movie doesn't really reach any heights, but it's a lovely, thoughtful, intelligent, warm and yet surprisingly sharp comedy, with very good acting. The film creates a little world and invites you in. Harold S. Bucquet (who took over Kate's film, Dragon Seed, when Jack Conway fell ill) had been the director of the MGM Dr. Kildare films, which were pretty darn good programmers. He brings a nice quality to this love story.

He doesn't want love because he's had the best of it, while she doesn't want love because she's had the best of it. In their third pairing together, the team of Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn show why they remain one of the great screen teams of all time. Tracy is a renowned scientist in Washington and unable to find a hotel, crashes at the pad of Keenan Wynn's whom he helps get home while drunk. Wynn is engaged to nasty socialite Patricia Morison who exemplifies everything that Tracy hates about women. But he meets his match in Hepburn, who is as anti-female as Morison is female. Toss in feisty Lucille Ball as a self proclaimed bad girl whom Tracy hits it off with from the start, proving that men and women can be buddies.This is a pre-women's liberation comedy that takes the battle of the sexes to another level after Tracy and Hepburn's conflicts of "Woman of the Year". All of the archetypes of the female species are there, from the nastiness of Morison's socialite to Ball's good old gal, up to Hepburn's sensible but fun loving earth mother. Even the crotchety housekeeper gets a certain archetype as well. Hepburn was delightfully independent in life, never intruding in on Tracy's real life marital situation but standing by him when he really needed her. In this, their friendship transfers over to their characters who decide to marry simply for partnership and common interests but find that they really can't live without love.Returning to the world of Philip Barry after both "Holiday" and "The Philadelphia Story", Hepburn joins Tracy who played this role on Broadway. MGM hit gold a third time with a popular team after the box office intake of the Powell/Loy and Rooney/Garland teams. Only their third film together, it was very clear that the third time was just as charming as the other two.

Without doubt, one of the weakest of the Tracy-Hepburn films, still somewhat better than "Desk Set" in 1957.Keenan Wynn really does some really good ham acting earlier in the film when he appears drunk. Lucille Ball, of all people, nearly plays it quite straight as a Realtor on the make for Wynn. These 2 potentially comical people really aren't that funny here. In fact, later in the film, it seems that Hepburn borrows some of the Ball antics later used on television's "I Love Lucy."Even with the title, we know how this is going to turn out: There has to be love, even for a couple joined together as he rejects love due to a bad experience, and she is rejecting it after her ideal marriage ends with the tragic death of her husband. This is supposed to be a marriage of convenience in war-time Washington.The science sequences are ridiculous at best.Little use is made of Patricia Morison, who gives quite a bitchy performance as a nasty, wealthy woman. She is the epitome of bitterness here.While the science sequences are inane, the picture's oxygen is literally sucked out.

WITHOUT LOVE is such an uneven film--some of it is quite inspired--but it's safe to say that there are a few scenes that make it worth watching even if it is a bit overlong in getting to its inevitable conclusion. Hepburn and Tracy are at their most polished as romantic partners. The subplot is handled with skill by Lucille Ball and Keenan Wynn (who does a great drunken bit) and fans of Tracy and Hepburn won't be disappointed in their handling of rather unusual roles.Hepburn has never been one of my particular favorites--I find her mannerisms are a turn-off by the time any film starring her has gone beyond fifteen minutes--but here she is actually showing a warmth, tenderness and vulnerability that she seldom really showed in any of her more well-known comedy roles. And Tracy is so natural, you forget he is just acting.The plot has two unlikely people who have given up love for opposite reasons actually finding out that they truly do love each other--but not until the last reel. All of their scenes are enhanced by the added device of having a dog who looks just like Toto (from the 'Wizard of Oz') steal many a scene. For added measure, Lucille Ball pops up in a brief but delightful supporting role opposite Keenan Wynn.Hepburn is more appealing here than she was as the stuck-up heroine of THE PHILADELPHIA STORY and the story, although predictable, has some very unusual touches that make it well worth watching, especially if you're fans of Hepburn or Tracy.Patricia Morison has a thankless supporting role and Gloria Grahame has a brief bit as a flower girl allergic to flowers in a nightclub scene.