Movieo
Poster for Alice Adams

Alice Adams

Twenty-two and wonderful ... as Booth Tarkington's loveliest heroine!

1935 · 1h 39m · APPROVED Drama, Romance
Directed by George Stevens

Seen it?

Overview

In the lower-middle-class Adams family, father and son are happy to work in a drugstore, but mother and daughter Alice try every possible social-climbing stratagem despite snubs and embarrassment. When Alice finally meets her dream man Arthur, mother nags father into a risky business venture and plans to impress Alice's beau with an "upscale" family dinner. Will the excruciating results drive Arthur away?

Director and cast

Critics on Rotten Tomatoes

Top critics, in their words

All reviews
93%
Tomatometer
Fresh

That George Stevens' direction captures the wistfulness of Katharine Hepburn's superb histrionism, and yet has not sacrificed audience values at the altar of too much drabness and prosaic realism, is an achievement of no small order.

Variety Staff, Variety
Fresh

Stevens's talent for stepping away from the plotline and creating intimate, casual, and naturalistic moments is given plenty of opportunity here, as it would not be in his later superproductions.

Dave Kehr, Chicago Reader
Fresh

An oddly exciting blend of tenderness, comedy and realistic despair, it touches life intimately at many points during its account of a lonely girl in a typical American small town.

Andre Sennwald, New York Times
Fresh

Hepburn is magnificent as the small-town social climber, although the script so softens Booth Tarkington's novel.

Tom Milne, Time Out

Comments

Talk about the film with other members

More films