I have no problem with the idea that "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?" is an important film, even if that judgment is ultimately based on the fact that director Stanley Kramer got the film made. This is a film about interracial marriage made in 1967 and set in that same time frame. Prior to that what did Hollywood have to point to that was anything similar besides various versions of "Showboat"? I first saw this movie at a theater on an U.S. Air Force Base in Japan, and I can remember the young Africa-American airmen really enjoying the movie, and why not? There is Sidney Poitier standing up to Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn demanding to marry their daughter. If that is not the fulfillment of the American Dream and evidence of racial equality, then what more is needed?

It is certainly true that Kramer stacks the deck. Poitier's John Prentice is a walking saint, constructed so that the only possible objection to him could be his race (unless you want to take a feeble stab at arguing he is too old for Joey or that he is so busy hopping around the world doing good deeds to make a decent husband). But Kramer cannot be faulted for setting up the proposition in black and white terms because that is exactly what is needed. The supporting cast provides comic relief in the form of Cecil Kellaway as Monsignor Ryan and Isabel Sanford as Tillie, and there are moments dealing with Oregon Boysenberry and meat deliveries that let us know that the subject matter is serious, but not super serious (which also works in the film's favor since that suggests Kramer is not so much advocating a change as recognizing one has already taken place). Kramer also employs more subtle arguments for equality, the most important being when John's mother (Beah Richards) and father (Roy E. Glenn, Sr.) show up and are presented and treated as equals by the Draytons.

"Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?" is not the last word on race relations in the United States circa the late 1960s, but in cinematic terms it is more properly considered the first word. How many people asked themselves whether they would let their daughter marry a Negro? I am sure the question was asked by millions of Americans, even if they did not see the movie because when it opened the question became inevitable. Even if the answer was "no" that sort of admission, publicly or privately, forces people to come up with reasons why and at that point you have the start of a debate, internal or otherwise. This was an important film in its time and place, and that is the context in which it is should be understood and appreciated, even if we also treasure the film because we believe that at the end of Tracy's speech one of the greatest actors of the 20th century is for a brief but significant moment no longer acting.

Final Note: I must comment on the irony that while Spencer Tracy was nominated for an Oscar for his last performance and did not win because the Academy was still years away from letting someone who had died win, the next two women to win Best Actress Oscars did so because of his death. Hepburn won her second Oscar for "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" in what is really a pedestrian role compared to those of Tracy and Poitier, and the actress always insisted the award was for both her and Tracy. The next year Hepburn won again for "The Lion in Winter" with Ingrid Bergman announcing there was a tie with Barbra Streisand for "Funny Girl." I will suggest that there was at least one member of the Academy who did not vote for Hepburn's great performance because she had won the year before, which would have broken the tie and Streisand would never have had the chance to say "Hello, Gorgeous." Meanwhile, Poitier turned out to be his own worst enemy when it came to getting an Oscar nomination that year since voters could not choose this performance over the ones he turned in for "In the Heat of the Night" and "To Sir With Love," one of the best acting trifectas for one year of all time.

KRAMER MAKES ANOTHER IMPORTANT AND TIMELY MOVIE
Review date: 2005-03-06 Rating: 8 out of 10

A prominent Australian filmmaker once commented, the job of a film director is to entertain. If he can teach or get a message across while entertaining that's even better. Kramer is one of those filmmakers who managed to do both, and he generally succeeded.

Look at what Kramer made, before he put GUESS WHO'S COMING TO DINNER on the screen: ON THE BEACH (1959 about nuclear war); INHERIT THE WIND (1960 about religion versus the Darwinian theory of evolution in Tennessee); JUDGEMENT AT NUREMBERG (1961, raising question about world culpability in the crimes against humanity perpetrated by the Nazis). There are no flies on Kramer.

I recall the stir created by GUESS WHO'S COMING TO DINNER when it first came out in 1967. Americans were being tested and challenged, to say the least, by the Vietnam War and the civil rights movement. At one end, white liberals were risking their lives in the south along side African-American civil rights activists. At the other end, racist bigots north and south were calling activists of any color communists, and much worse. Sometimes, in the heat of the summer with racial tensions and frustrations rising, some cities were torched. Into this cauldron Kramer dropped GUESS WHO'S COMING TO DINNER. I can still recall white liberals and radicals condemning Sydney Poitier's character with slurs such as "super spade" because Kramer seemd he felt obliged to create an African-American male hero who could walk on water. In Kramer's world, an American black man had to be superman merely to qualify for marrying a middle class attractive, white air head. The bigots condemned the film because .... well, that's what bigots do.

I believe that Kramer did what he thought was necessary for telling the story of an interracial marriage in1960s America. And, as a matter of fact, when all is said and done he may have hit the nail on the head. He showed what kind of fantastic credentials an African-American male needed for even the most super liberal white father to accept him as a son-in-law for his carefully cultivated, racially oblivious daughter. So then, while today's racially enlightened viewer may be offended by such directorial excesses, Kramer's point was, I think, that this is how bad things are in America. A white super liberal has a lot of trouble with his daughter marrying an African-American superman. If that was what Kramer was up to with this film, then his point was well taken!

For the many Tracy-Hepburn reasons others mentioned here, a lot of pathos was added to the film. My complaint is somewhat trivial .... but it has some merit, I think. The occasional crude and rude manner in which the character played by Tracy expresses himself to his daughter and wife seemed out of character. He was supposed to be a gruff two-fisted, newspaperman. But when near the end of the movie he barks at his daughter to "shut up" and later asks Tillie their maid, "when the hell are we eating?" this was out of character. It was poor directing rather than poor acting. Of course, Tracy was literally only a few days from actually dying of cancer. And so one can jump to the conclusion that Tracy's medical condition caused the lapses. But after Tracy's absolutely superb soliloquey in the last minutes of GUESS WHO'S COMING TO DINNER, Kramer owed it to Tracy to make his excit scene both in the film and in life perfect. Tracy could have done it with Kramer's help. Because Kramer allowed his film to be made less than perfectly, I couldn't give it a perfect 5-star rating.

Otherwise, Kramer succeeded in getting an important social message across while at the same time entertaining. This makes GUESS WHO'S COMING TO DINNER an excellent, if occasionally flawed, work of art.

You shouldn't miss it
Review date: 2003-03-10 Rating: 10 out of 10

I saw this film last night for the first time in years. I didn't remember it very well and I was afraid it might have not aged well. After all, mixed race marriages are quite common nowadays so, why should the film be relevant to today's audiences? The fact is it is. Apart from the fact that there's still plenty of racism around, I am sure that may parents still would have the reactions and thoughts that those parents have. And even if you disagree with me here, just think how it would be if you happened to be gay and had to introduce a partner to your parents.

But to me the best of the film is the chemistry between the actors. This is really the best of the film, and to me perhaps the reason why I enjoyed it so much. The supporting characters are great (the maid, the monsignor and the gallery manager, Sidney Poitier's father). Sidney Poitier and the girl (can't remember her name) are perfectly convincing as a young couple in love, afraid of what the parents might thing but strong enough to fight for it. But the best is really Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy. She won an Oscar (number 2 out of 4), he missed it, but both of them are simply marvellous. At moments, you get insights to their own lives, like in no other film they did together: the way they look at each other at certain points in the film is not just acting to them, I'm sure it was real. Watch it and wonder why films aren't this good any more.

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