Pat and Mike is a romance movie directed by George Cukor in 1952. This movie is about the all-around female athlete Pat becoming professional and finding her true love. Pat is a promising athlete and extremely good at golf and tennis. But all her fiancée wants is for them to get married. On the other hand, Pat is an unconventional woman who has the passion to become an expert rather than get married and live a smooth life. She finds Mike Conovan a manager who only cares about money. Together, they fight to win and get over many obstacles. At the end of the movie, they connect.
Pat and Mike is a romance movie rather than a sports movie. This movie emphasized much on a plot describing Pat’s relations with other male characters. Her fiancée is a terrible fiancée, who does not support her career. Moreover, when he shows up, she just can’t play well. On one tennis game, before her fiancée shows up, she plays very well. But as soon as her fiancée shows up, she starts to lose points. Furthermore, it is not a mistake anymore, it becomes a problem. At the beginning, she loses points because her serve is powerless. At the end, the net suddenly rises and she passes out. On the contrary, Mike is always supporting her. At first, he is just caring for money. But as time goes by, he cares more about her than the money. For instance, when Mike is feeding the horse, he sees Pat’s face mirroring the horse’s face and he laughs. Moreover, when the boxer asks Mike to go with him, Mike refuses because he wants to go with Pat.
Another big theme of this movie is the new independent image of women. Before the 1950s, the only goal of American girls was to build a family with a good man even women attend college and university. That was a social changing period of time. Women were finding equal opportunities and challenging their traditional roles in the family as well as the world during that time. Pat was just one of those women. She was a talented athlete with a promising career. Instead of staying at home as other women did in this traditional way, she went out to fight for her future, and she did very well on tennis and golf. Her fiancée played the opposite way and disagreed with her. He thought she shouldn’t do all these stuff.
In this movie, sport was a support role to push the story to go forward. In order to do so, during the tennis game, the director used some illusion to make Pat lost her game. This is a technique used a lot in comedy movies to create a sense of humor and is known as hyperbole. This is absolutely against common sense. Also this movie chose golf and tennis which are less intense than other competitive sports to create an easy atmosphere. On the other hand, Tracy and Hepburn were the most popular pair of actors in the 1950s. People came to the theater to see them rather than the movie. That means this movie was shaped for these two characters. In this situation, it would make more sense to say Pat and Mike was a romance movie and sport only play a support role in this movie.
Pat and Mike was a light romantic comedy story. By using joyful music, humor, and dialogue to create an easy atmosphere, the movie tells a good story. But technically, it’s not a good sport movie. Because sport only plays a support role in the movie.
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