A Guy Named Joe

ANGUISH. This story still does to me what it did to my equally silly, girly self ten years ago: the puddle of goo still gives way to torrential sobbing. Oh, how Spielberg’s soppy remake affected me then, and damned if the original doesn’t hit just the same notes for me today! I guess this is sentimental and patriotic and other things not usually to my taste, but at its core it’s a great romance I can’t help but fall for, with one of those fast, quippy screenplays old Hollywood excelled at. Yes I loved Dreyfuss and Hunter, but here Spencer Tracy is perhaps the most rascally charming man living, and Irene Dunne kicks so much more ass in comparison: she’s not just in a control tower, but actually a fighter pilot herself! Now how did a remake 45 years later lose its feminist credentials? Anyway I can’t think of many other Golden Age romances that so perfectly balanced quippy barbs and real tenderness; Tracy & Dunne have exceptionally powerful chemistry. And it is, yes, so much the film that too easily moved me at 14… “girl clothes!” “You’re still my girl.” 6.8, IMDb, heartless thing? Oh, then it shall be mine all mine…