Love Among the Ruins

Cukor's last really impressive film was, ironically, made for television, and as such is stylistically rather less ambitious than his finest work. That said, his strengths were always his way with actors and his interest in the nuances of the battle between the sexes, and this remains a minor gem on both counts. Hepburn is the Edwardian dowager being sued for breach of promise by a much younger man (Lawson); Olivier is the eminent barrister whose course of defence - born of outrage at her inability to remember their brief affair years previously - is to portray her (falsely) as a senile old duffer incapable of passion. A gently sentimental comedy that never patronises the aged, the film charms with its subtle insights, quiet generosity, and sympathy for the plight of women in a repressive, male-dominated society. In short, it's a Cukor film through and through.