Morning Glory

Morning Glory was completely and utterly lost upon me. It starts out perfectly fine enough, a hungry young up-and-comer named Eva Lovelace (Katharine Hepburn) strolls into a theater and looks at the portraits of the past greats. You can tell that she is determined and head-strong, that this performance is probably something of an autobiography for Hepburn at the time. Once she starts opening her mouth the film falls apart. Eva is unbelievably pretentious, almost deranged and megalomaniacal, and saddled with overripe dialogue. The overarching plot is inert, generally apathetic and fast-paced story which glosses by and zips past story beats like an affair with a producer and the struggles that she encounters on her way towards stardom. All of this could have been salvaged had the performances been up to par, but everyone across the board is either serviceable or cringe-inducing/awful. Hepburn is so overly mannered and broadly arched that it’s a wonder that she won an Oscar for this. She is truly bad, but she is the rare actress who blossomed and got better as she got older. The Hepburn of, say, Long Day’s Journey Into Night would have slaughtered this Hepburn.