WITHOUT LOVE (1945) B/W 111m dir: Harold S. Bucquet

w/Spencer Tracy, Katharine Hepburn, Lucille Ball, Keenan Wynn, Carl Esmond, Patricia Morrison, Felix Bressart, Emily Massey, Gloria Grahame, George Davis, George Chandler, Clancy Cooper

Talky, often amusing comedy about a scientist and a widow who marry for convenience. The cast is terrific.

From Variety's contemporary review of the film: "Competent trouping and topflight production make Without Love a click. But there's no gainsaying the general obviousness of it all, along with a somewhat static plot basis [from a play by Philip Barry].

"There is a lack of conviction despite the adult trouping of the lady scientist who aids the gentleman scientist. It's a foregone conclusion that behind their mutual shells of yesteryear amours they'll clinch eventually. Hers was the idyllic love, too shortlived, but a perfect two years, until his death; and Spencer Tracy's love life is something out of a Parisian past.

"Interspersed is an intelligent pooch who has been trained to curb Tracy's somnambulism, which is planted early for boudoir usage later. Somehow this is inconsistent with so stoic a character as Tracy, but somehow, also, it's made acceptable, as is the squabbling Keenan Wynn-Patricia Morrison business, and the rest of it. All of which is wholly to the cast's credit."

From the Criterion Confessions website (www.criterionconfessions.com), this 2018 review of the film by Jamie S. Rich:

"By this point [1945] the Katharine Hepburn persona was pretty well-established, and her romantic comedies were becoming a staple of cinemas. It was her third movie with Spencer Tracy, a most winning combination and perennial exception to the rule that off-screen chemistry is supposed to yield on-screen fizzles. In fact, a kind of repertory had gathered around Hepburn in the intervening years. The screenplay for Without Love was adapted by Donald Ogden Stewart, who had also written the scripts for Holiday ... and The Philadelphia Story, and all three movies were taken from stage plays by Philip Barry.

"The deliciously improbable plot casts Tracy as scientist Patrick Jamieson, a citizen contributing to the wartime effort by secretly working on a high-altitude oxygen mask for pilots in the U.S. army. A chance meeting leads him to the basement in the house of Jamie Rowan (Hepburn), a wealthy widow whose personal loss has made her never want to love again. Pat is of the same mind, but for the opposite reason. Rather than having experienced the greatest love of his life, he's experienced the greatest frustration --- a French socialite who keeps him dangling by a heartstring. Another thing the pair has in common is that their late fathers were both scientists, and so they share a hunger for knowledge and discovery. Seeing the perfect opportunity for a coupling, they decide to get married. It will be a union of convenience, built on true friendship without any of that troublesome love stuff mucking up the works.

"It wouldn't be a Tracy/Hepburn picture, of course, if this plan didn't go horribly awry. Two people so perfect for each other will perfectly fall in love. Not without their obstacles, of course. Jamie will have to get over hang-ups, and Pat will have to finally let go of his French pastry. Comedy ensues along the way, including gleefully silly montages of the two at work in Pat's lab. There is also some funny business involving Pat's sleepwalking and the little dog he's trained to stop him from wandering too far. Running parallel to the action is another comic couple, played by a young Lucille Ball and Keenan Wynn (Royal Wedding). It's nearly a case of the supporting cast running away with the show. Though Ball is more restrained than we'd come to know from her, I've never seen Wynn be funnier. He's marvelous as the perpetually drunken Quentin, equal parts clown and cad.

"As a Tracy/Hepburn fan new to Without Love ... , the film fits right in with what I like about the acting duo's comedies. Hepburn's character is never any less than her partner's equal, which is not always the case in 1940s romantic comedies. She is always smart and active in her own power, and her specialness is never neutralized. Rather, both lovers usually have to move either up or down to find a common ground that will allow them to be together. For me, what sets Without Love apart from the rest of their team-ups is the final scene, where Jamie and Pat admit their love without ever admitting it out and out. They do a little verbal dance, saying what they feel in a roundabout way. It's both clever and smart, and the two actors come off as remarkably sincere while still keeping it light. (In reality, they weren't stepping too far outside themselves, as they had years of a very public private affair.) Their last embrace is surprisingly sensual. Hepburn looks particularly hungry, like she's just about to bite a chunk of flesh from Tracy's head. It's enough to inspire the vapors."