Cheap Without Love (Video) (Spencer Tracy, Katharine Hepburn) (Harold S. Bucquet) Price

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Customer Reviews of Without Love

Platonic Love
Spencer Tracy and his dog look for suitable premises. He does research work on behalf of the Air Force who entrusts him with the development of a new oxygen-mask. Katharine Hepburn's house meets his requirements and the young widow is impressed by his charm. They have one thing in common: Both of them repress their carnal appetite. HE is disappointed ("She was vivacious, amusing aand dull") while HER marriage brought her a fullfilment she thinks is impossible to relive. Tracy plays the piano (Schubert) and listens to her biography ("I was born in 1917" is not entirely truthful but Hepburn looks beautiful with her pigtails). When he treats her with contempt - her world-weariness is in his eyes nothing but self-complacency - she would have turned him out, but his lab is already equipped, military supplies arrive - and not even Katharine Hepburn can say "no" to the Ministry of War. Infected by his patriotism she offers her services as assistant and guinea-pig and proposes to him. Not love will be their basis but "honesty, courage and humor". He would have turned her down but his ex is on his track and revenge is sweet...So Tracy assures Hepburn of his honorable intentions and gives her a peck on the cheek and she gives him a peck on the cheek - and so they seal their deal.

Their business connection is fertile...fecund...fruitful: she spends her time in a pressurized cabin and when he reduces the pressure she turns a somersault. Their conjugal connection does not take place: they implore a friend to stay during their wedding night and when Tracy goes astray - in Hepburn's bed - she is willing to buy his justification: somnambulism! Spring arrives, two lovebirds (Lucille Ball & Keenan Wynn) bill and coo and Hepburn decides to bring competition (a latin lover) into play...

...and you can guess the rest. The last half hour could have been less plodding, but there is an imaginative scene when Hepburn mimics Tracy's ex - long cigarette-holder, feathers-boa, affected french accent - because she thinks he finds this type of woman sexy. The funniest moment: Tracy transports his dog - in a suitcase with an oxygen-mask! The title "Without Love" is misleading: Tracy & Hepburn flirt without intermission...

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LIGHTLY AMUSING.
The wartime housing shortage is the the excuse which brings the legendary duo together in this one: Tracy is a homespun scientist working on a helmet for high-altitude flying, and Hepburn is a widow with a big empty house in Washington D.C....One of the more mediocre films in the Tracy-Hepburn series; it has a rather metallic flavour. Hepburn comes off as being something between an old maid and a tomboy; she's at her most annoyingly cultured and affected here - but she keeps exclaiming "by gum'(!) The direction by Harold S. Bucquet is pedistrian and the dialogue tries to be sophisticated, but it doesn't match the plot maneuvers (such as the one requiring Tracy to be a sleepwalker: in the movies it's almost as tacky as amnesia). Philip Barry fashioned the play for Hepburn when she just barely sqeaked by with it on Broadway in 1942. Donald Ogden Stewart re-wrote much of the material for the screen and the result was a box-office success in 1945. In the second leads, Lucille Ball and Keenan Wynn are, in actuality, much more likable.

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By Gum!
Not Hepburn and Tracy's best, but still a funny, pleasant comedy. Hepburn is Jamie Rowan, a widow living in the past, whose basement scientist Pat Jamieson (Tracy) wants to use to construct a government-commissioned oxygen mask for World War II pilots. The two decide to marry platonically and help each other as partners. But it's only a matter of time before love begins to complicate the marriage...

Though the plot is a little creaky and predictable, Hepburn and Tracy shine, as always. Keenan Wynn and Lucille Ball, however, are the standouts as the second leads. Both hilarious and touching, they add comic zest to the film and make you come away from it thinking it's better than it actually is.