Quite apart from delicacy of any sort, “Alice Adams” goes about slugging its points home by means of an assortment of devices that are only described with the beautiful economy of one word, which word is hokum.

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.

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.

This all attempts to be folksy comedy, but very often falls into savage satire.