Katherine Hepburn plays a very strange woman, who makes a grand entrance by stealing a wandering golfball and playing it as her own. Grant, never having seen this woman in his life, now finds himself unable to complete his business deal and instead attempts to get this nutty person off his back, with no success. She not only steals his golfball, but also drives off with his car, creates a scene in a restaurant, and, later in the evening, knocks out accidentally (I think!!) the man whom Grant had been trying to impress. All of this has to be seen to be believed, and is only a summary of the first 15 minutes. There is in fact much more, including that of "Baby" herself, who is Hepburn`s leopard. This beast becomes responsible for a number of amusing scenes, and is very important to the chaotic climax.
Insanity is certainly a perfect element to this story, because without it there would only be the romance, which this movie does not take very seriously, and which would be somewhat pathetic is it did. My own impression at first was that Katherine Hepburn`s character was a grating nuisance, as she constantly makes shambles out of Cary Grant`s life and sanity. No filmmaker today would be able to avoid scorn with this depiction of a woman, but after a while, even Hepburn`s character grows on you. In a sense, she is a stalker, by attempting to shove herself into every situation and place which Grant is involved in, and by making herself appear the innocent. One great scene involves one of Hepburn`s attempts at shifting the blame for these catastrophes to Grant, when she asks the opinion of a psychiatrist about the fact that whenever Grant is around, bad things start to happen. The expert states that he is the one with the fixation, and that his obsession can only be expressed by conflict.
Overall, the romance in films like this are not depicted tenderly, but cynically. We see that love does not involve romantic bonds between two people, but manipulation and desperation. Our couple does get together at the end of the film, but only because Grant has been so worn down by Hepburn. He has given up trying to understand or escape this woman, so he falls in love. Of course, during the course of the film, we are not meant to feel any negative response, only to laugh, and this film succeeds in giving us that pleasure.
