Desk Set

Year: 1957

Grade: C+

Country: USA

Director: Lang

Review

funny enough 50s comedy feature spencer tracy and the better of the two hepburn sisters. my major comment about the film, unfortunately, is the conclusion it came to. first some background…tracy plays an efficiency expert and hepburn plays a reference clerk who is absolutely brilliant with numbers and facts. tracy is hired by the company hepburn works for to see if his new computer will be able to save manpower in the company, specifically the reference department. by the end of the film he has installed computers in the reference department and the payroll department. as a result everyone in the reference dept., including hepburn, is issued a pink slip. it’s the most moving portion of the film because it conveys in no uncertain terms the logical progression of humanity’s reliance on technology. the brilliant and lovable character that hepburn is, is suddenly without a job because the man upstairs wanted to save some money by using a machine, instead of humans, for his reference dept. but, like “adaptation,” i felt that the film collapsed back over the brave ground it had just tread. the pink slips that everyone in the dept. got were just a computer glitch and the computer was just there to “aid” the employees because a merger was in the works and there was bound to be more work for them in the near future. so everything worked itself out just fine. i understand that it’s a comedy and shouldn’t have to be politically and socially conscious, but it took me there as a viewer and then backstepped so i can’t just let is slide. in real life the computer replaced everyone’s job in the department and the merger eliminated 40% more of the workforce. fucking rich people piss me off.