Keeper of the Flame (1991, VHS)

Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn's second pairing following the blockbuster WOMAN OF THE YEAR. The film's obviously an anti-fascist propaganda piece--one of many that MGM began pumping out once war was underway between England and Germany, but Tracy and Hepburn rise to the challege of stylishly carrying a somewhat lugubrious script under the nuanced direction of their friend George Cukor. KEEPER OF THE FLAME was made about the same time as MRS. MINIVER, another MGM anti-fascist, pro-democracy flick with two other big MGM stars, Greer Garson and Walter Pidgeon. KEEPER OF THE FLAME, part melodrama, part noir thriller, takes place in the fall of 1941 and stars Tracy as a liberal journalist who returns from Europe to write the biography of a great American named Robert Forrest who is killed in a car crash on his estate on "a dark and stormy night" at the film's beginning. Hepburn is Forrest's widow who initially agrees to help Tracy write the biography and then is reluctant to share her personal recollections of the dead man. The movie explores (a little heavy-handedly) the insidious nature of fascism. One can't help feeling that the film might be a thinly veiled indictment of Charles Lindbergh, who had been a great American hero but during the late 30s and early 40s was a pacifist and a Nazi-sympathizer--something that MGM boss Louis Mayer despised. The film deserves more respect than it gets, both for being a satisfying early pairing of a legendary film team under the direction of Cukor and for being a little time capsule representing the kind of films that the big studios were churning out to get Americans in the mind to fight a war. Mayer, Cukor, Tracy and Hepburn were all big liberals and big fans of Franklin Roosevelt. One can't help but think that this film must have been a loveletter to the old man's efforts to get the U.S. prepared to fight the Germans.