IN THE developed continents of North America and Europe, as well as some Latin American nations, despite hundreds of DVD stores stocking films from the entire world, hundreds of cinemas showing many of these very films continue to flourish.
In fact, the political and social stability of these countries are culturally related to: (1) The continued tradition of experiencing the shared effect of constructive thought via filmmaking on audiences who react collectively in cinemas or auditoriums; (2) the study of classic film culture at University level, and the publication of countless studies on directors, actors, genres, production periods, problems of cinematic style, etc, in book form.
Contemporary governmental and social powers, regardless of their changing rule, cannot be ignorant of the enormous solutions film culture has already achieved, since these achievements register on the everyday values and efficiency of society. In less developed societies, where, perhaps, the collective social effect of cinemas may be discontinued, numerous human solutions to individual and social problems provided by serious film culture may cease to function if the society’s problems are considered settled and solved only by political ideas, which gain in importance and dominance due to the subtle loss of the population’s collective relationship to civilized values, and all sorts of solutions already explored within films they no longer have knowledge or experience of.

Grant’s social Utopia

Some of Cary Grant’s best films of the 1940s are proof of such practical and possible Utopian values and solutions. ‘THE PHILADELPHIA STORY’ of 1941 is a film which, on the surface, may seem removed from the average lifestyle of ‘working class’ people, and more concerned with a well-known bourgeois family whose egotistic adult daughter is played characteristically by Katherine Hepburn, but when looked at carefully, this is a film about the freedom of a woman to keep two men stringing along for her affection – one a frank, suave gentleman played by Grant, and the other a charming social journalist played by James Stewart – without either becoming jealously angry or violent.
Is such an attitude merely false and Utopian? Or is the film actually suggesting more reasonable and pleasurable values for us to emulate? The film’s director, George Cukor, was one of Hollywood’s best since the 1930s, making almost four dozen films, often projecting women in a balanced way, portraying their struggles in a man’s world, and resisting obstacles to their intimacy with those not of their class or race.
This is borne out by some of  Cukor’s great film classics like: ‘THE WOMEN’ (1939), ‘KEEPER OF THE FLAME’ (1943) , ‘A LIFE OF HER OWN’ (1950), ‘BHOWANI JUNCTION’ (1956), and the famous Oscar-winning musical, ‘MY FAIR LADY’ (1964).
Katherine Hepburn, like Grant, had been one of Cukor’s stars, and it is no surprise when we look at her firm stance against conformity and prejudice, that she would portray the agreeable mother of the white girl serious about marrying Sydney Poitier in Stanley Kramer’s ‘GUESS WHO’S COMING TO DINNER’ of 1967.

Grant & Hitchcock

Grant and Hepburn  may be seen as two sides of the same zesty and witty coin, but Grant made use of his real working-class roots by taking it into a sphere where what is important is not the definition of personality or character in the framework of ‘class’, but as a self-made evolving identity. The brilliance of Grant’s first film under Hitchcock’s thrilling direction, ‘SUSPECION’ of 1941, is how this reliance on a self-made or simply individualistic identity leads to class-conscious suspicion from both the upper-class woman he falls in love with and marries, and her domineering father.
Indeed, we find out she marries him for his good looks and popularity, and to get out from under her domineering father. But Hitchcock’s ‘SUSPECION’ gave Grant the opportunity to defend his interest in ambiguous and stereotyped characterizations, and audiences a skillful exercise in exploring their own social prejudices and fears; in this sense it creates a novel understanding towards a classless utopianism in the present.

Grant & Delmer Daves

In 1943, Grant delivered one of his most touching and instructive social roles ever in ‘DESTINATION TOKYO’, a beautiful classic film that is far more than a World War II adventure. Grant’s role as the captain of the submarine sent on a secret mission in the Pacific was a perfect vehicle for him to show his contribution to the Allied Forces resistance to the spread of Nazism, and a pleasant microcosm of socialistic values at its best.
Director Delmer Daves — one of the most dedicated Hollywood masters of film as a road to human equality, proven in film after film against ethnic prejudice, racism, and stereotyping — had John Garfield co-star in one of his most memorable roles which made him a Hollywood legend, and young John Forsythe, who today is an experienced Hollywood star, in his first role, as the soft nervous sailor on his first mission, whose anxiety makes him mistake a circling distant gull high above the ocean for an enemy fighter plane.
Daves is not a director who wastes time, so when Grant first appears, we see him trying to get through on the phone to his wife on Christmas Eve, intending to inform her he had sudden orders to sail immediately. He does not get through, and leaves without wishing her Merry Christmas.
This film moves us with its camaraderie of men alone beneath the ocean wishing each-other Merry Christmas on Christmas morning, joking, yet doing their job well. Grant is characteristically funny when he plays cowboy songs on his record player, and Delmer Daves gives him a perfect introductory line when, on preparing to sail, the cook offers for his inspection a carton filled with chilli sauce and Ketchup, and Grant says: “You got plenty of steaks to go with that?” in a voice that came to define Cary Grant. ‘DESTINATION TOKYO’ is a beautiful lesson in social cohesion for all those in service to their country in all aspects.