State of the Union is one of the best Hollywood films about American politics, especially the behind the scenes dealings during a presidential election.Spencer Tracy plays Grant Matthews a successful businessman who builds aeroplanes. He is touted as the potential Republican nominee for President. Katherine Hepburn is his wife Mary,who believes in him and his ideals.Her problem is that his mistress,Kay Thorndyke (an icy Angela Lansbury)is a powerful newspaper mogul who also is one of his supporters. She believes that she can make him President and be the power behind the throne. Which woman will gain control of his heart and his political soul? The film shows how Matthews gradually loses his way as compromises have to be made with various interests from unions to farmers. Ambition leads to expediency.Mary watches as the man she loves becomes a shell of his former self as he gives in to special interests. His lofty speeches become standard stump speeches just like any other politician.Adolph Menjou is great as Jim Conover, the fixer who loves the back room dealing and horse trading.His character is so cynical about the process,you wonder if he believes in anything apart from process.Angela Lansbury is a revelation, as this role is a million miles away from cosy Jessica Fletcher in Murder, she wrote. Kay can only be described as ruthlessly ambitious. She can stand her ground in a room full of men and is not afraid to tell them who is boss. If she can't run for President herself, she can at least make one. Only Mary stands in her way. The personal and political become intertwined. I love the scene when the two meet near the end of the film and eye each other up.Special mention has to go to Van Johnson, as Spike Macmanus the campaign manager who provides relentless comic relief.I noticed a couple of things in this film, which shows how chaste Hollywood was in the late 1940s. You never see the Matthews in bed together. Grant and Kay's affair is referred to, but very rarely are they seen together. How times have changed! This film is the perfect companion to The Candidate(1972) starring Robert Redford. There are lots of comparisons.Both films made over twenty years apart, ask the same questions: Can a politician remain idealistic once the process gets hold of him or her ?Is compromise inevitable?

The plot is slick: Newspaper magnate Angela Lansbury wants to push her lover -- aircraft tycoon Spencer Tracy -- into running for President on the Republican ticket, thus making her the power behind the throne. But there are some sticky problems -- the affair, the real wife (Katharine Hepburn), and Tracy's own reticence to run. And, Lansbury wants to use Hepburn's disdain of the affair as a way to lead her to support Tracy's candidacy. The climax comes when a nationwide fireside chat is planned from the Matthews' home, and both Lansbury and Hepburn are present.Spencer Tracy: In this film, Tracy continues a very rapid transition from middle-aged to beginning to look old. Appropriate for a presidential candidate, but Tracy was aging rather quickly, considering that in his films of the mid-40s, he still looked mid-40ish himself. Then in films of the late 40s ("The Sea Of Grass" and "Cass Timberlane") the transformation came quickly. And here, in 1948 he is looking very distinguished. Tracy is at his best, particularly at the climax of the film.Katharine Hepburn: I consider this one of her best performances, particularly her soliloquy near the end of the film. And the chemistry between Spencer and Katharine...remarkable...and it certainly shines through here.Van Johnson: As I was watching, I was thinking about how much better Van Johnson's smart-aleck reporter went across in this Tracy film, than did Gene Kelly's in "Inherit The Wind". Here Johnson's character attempted to show the negative side of politics, and succeeded, and it's remarkable how many lines still ring true 60 years later! Adolphe Menjou: Not one of my favorites, but brilliant here as the stereotypical smoke-filled-room era politician, and interested to note that the conservative Menjou and the liberal Hepburn were apparently at each other to the point of not speaking during the shoot (according to the new Tracy biography).Angela Lansbury: Remarkably, Lansbury was only 23 years old when this film was made, and I think you may see parallels between her role/performance here and in "The Manchurian Candidate".Lewis Stone: Has a small, but critical role at the beginning of the film as Lansbury's father...a powerful but spurned politician that commits suicide while suffering from intestinal cancer...and the scenes between Lansbury and Stone are critical to understanding what makes Lansbury's character do what she does.This is a wonderful film, and one of the better examples of the Hepburn-Tracy relationship. Each shines here. And, of course, this is one of the later films by director Frank Capra, and although it is not held in as high esteem as some of his earlier films, I personally think it is one of his best. A great addition to your DVD shelf. My rating -- a very strong "7".

Sadly, politics haven't changed, and probably never will, in the intervening 61 years since this movie was made. As with most Capra movies, it's not hard to get the message, but that doesn't make it any less hard hitting. Also, as with most Capra movies, it allows the viewer to wonder "what if" if only for a couple of hours. All of the major actors are stellar, but then again, they were seldom anything but in most of their films. It was a little distracting to see Spencer Tracey looking down to apparently read some of his final speech, but the speech and the entire movie were very powerful. It should be required viewing for today's political science classes.

What Frank Capra did here was take a stage script, assemble the finest actors available, add a couple of scenes not seen onstage, and deliver a thoroughly entertaining still politically-relevant showcase.Tracy and Hepburn, as always, are solid and fascinating. Did anybody ever "catch" Spencer Tracy "acting?" That's the advice Burt Reynolds said Spence gave him on acting: "Don't let 'em catch you at it." There, in seven words, is the most profound advice ever given to actors. And Tracy absolutely embodied it throughout his long career.The single "stagiest" moment in "State of the Union" is Tracy's long speech to the old man at the wrought-iron fence in front of the rear-projection White House. An utterly impossible catalogue of history's "heroes," fictional and non-, who "spiritually" inhabit the White House -- "that noble edifice." The speech is a mouthful and pedantic to boot. But somehow, Tracy manages to pull it off.Hepburn, as always, is thoroughly captivating, both as a performer and in the character. Yet, as always, there are moments you "catch" her acting. Say, in her "drunken" transition from laughter to tears in the broadcast sequence that concludes "State of the Union." Hepburn's best and bravest work, perhaps, was in "Long Day's Journey Into Night." Her silliest and phoniest? "Bringing Up Baby." (Yet even there, she's still delightful!) Who else in "State of the Union" do you catch "acting?" Van Johnson. Margaret Hamilton. Taken as "comic relief," however, they're fine -- in a stagy sort of overplayed way.Certainly not Angela Lansbury or Adolphe Menjou. Both fine actors who long understood the different demands for stage and film. And delivered.What's alarming is the shoddy "continuity" early on. Perhaps for budgetary reasons, Capra couldn't reshoot the initial scene in Kay Thorndyke's (Angela Lansbury's) office. Or perhaps the continuity girl was home sick that day. Or the actors' couldn't remember their positions from setup to setup. Or Capra didn't care.Whatever. Virtually every cut in that office scene finds the participants (except Tracy, tellingly) in significantly different postures than from a split-second ago. Lansbury leans back in her chair behind her desk. CUT: she's sitting forward, leaning over papers on her desk. Etc., etc. It's jarring and sloppy.The highlight, among many highlights, of "State of the Union" is the near-end entry of Judge and Lulubelle Alexander at the home-broadcast of Tracy's pre-election address to the nation. Played by Raymond Turner and Maidel Walburn. You don't catch them acting, either. Maidel Walburn is particularly impressive as the jolly matronly alcoholic wife of a Louisiana politician. Walburn is the very definition of "supporting actor" here. She and Hepburn play off each other with seeming spontaneity and obvious great humor.Amazingly, one knows more about "Lulubelle" from this brief sequence -- her background, her humor as self-protection, her shallowness, her heartbreak, her essential goodness, her need for alcohol -- than one knows about the backstories of either Spencer Tracy's or Katharine Hepburn's characters. And it's not in the writing. It's in Walburn's effortless performance.Then "State of the Union" devolves into a Capra-esquire feel-good ending featuring a crowd of extras singing "for-he's-a-jolly-good-fellow" bromides as the wife and children huddle for a closeup. Better done in "It's a Wonderful Life" because Christmas was thrown into the mix. But still effective. In a cheaply manipulative kind of way.Great scenes. Wonderful performers. A rare gem.And you still can't catch Spencer Tracy acting.