LYCOS RETRIEVER 
George Cukor: Films
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Her Cardboard Lover (1942), a claustrophobic adaptation of a French farce that Cukor had staged in the twenties with Laurette Taylor, made a somewhat appropriate career finale for Shearer. Most of it takes place in a bedroom, so Cukor contrasts the static set-ups with near-constant hysteria. Cukor lavished his laser-like attention on Crawford for two minor films, Susan and God [A]nd A Woman's Face. In Susan and God, a vague tale of religious mania, Crawford seems out of her depth at first, but she eventually settles in and gives a good high comedy performance, counterbalanced by the desperate quietness of Fredric March as her alcoholic husband. March has a striking moment in his first scene: he staggers out of a movie theatre, sees himself in a mirror, and makes a sour, “Oh, so it's you?” sort of face, a perfect detail. For A Woman's Face, Cukor drew out all of Crawford's woundedness and pathetic hopes in a character study about a scarred lady gangster.
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Born in New York City, Cukor began his career in the theater as a stage manager and was directing Broadway shows by the mid-1920s. He moved to Hollywood in the late 1920s, working initially as a dialogue coach for films, which had just begun using sound at the time. He began directing in 1930 and quickly achieved a reputation for his sophisticated, literate films, often adapted from novels or plays. These include Dinner at Eight (1933), with Jean Harlow and Marie Dressler; David Copperfield (1935), adapted from the novel by English author Charles Dickens, with W. C. Fields as Micawber; and Romeo and Juliet (1936), adapted from the play by English writer William Shakespeare, with Leslie Howard as Romeo and Norma Shearer as Juliet.
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Cukor's visual style in A Double Life (1948) is consistent throughout the film. Many of the shots involve a pan from one composition to another. Both the start and end compositions are elaborate and visually beautiful. The pan is often approximately 90 degrees. It often follows the characters as they move from one position to another. The mid sections of the pan are graceful, but they are less elaborately composed than the beginning and ending compositions.
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In 1936, Cukor tackled Shakespeare with a new film version of Romeo and Juliet. It was not as well-received as his previous literary adaptations. Critic Alberto Cavalcanti said it was out-of-date: "It is impossible to realize how bad this film was unless you reflect upon how good it might have been." The novelist Graham Greene called it "unimaginative, coarse-grained, a little banal." Nonetheless, the film was nominated for an Academy Award.
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All the schools should teach this film, because you can see from the first frames that Cukor knows how to make a movie, and it’s as good as any. Cukor believes that directing means being direct. This gives him means whereby an action scene (a lapdog plunging onto the floor, a girl skidding on snow) registers itself simply, and when Jo March wants a moment of privacy, he is there with his camera already waiting. Time passing is a luxurious stretch in a sleepy actress, and drama is what thespians do. Cukor is there to record it as best he may, with his camera.
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In 1940, Cukor directed Hepburn with Cary Grant, in The Philadelphia Story, about a stuffy heiress who gets her comeuppance. Halliwell's Film Guide calls it "Hollywood's most wise and sparkling comedy, with a script which is even an improvement on the original play. Cukor's direction is so discreet you can hardly sense it, and all the performances are just perfect."
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