Nobody has ever entered a room like Cary Grant. He’d burst in with a smile on his face, flinging the door open like he was the wind itself. He does it several times in 1938’s Holiday, a film that’s all about comings and goings. Based on a 1928 play and previously adapted into a lesser film in 1930, Holiday is a love song built on somber tones. Much of it is set at the palatial New York home of the Setons, where Julia (Doris Nolan), the youngest of three grown children, is about to marry Johnny Case (Grant), a working man the family assumes is interested in marrying into money. They don’t judge him for it. They respect his ambition and see no conflict in marrying for both love and money. But Johnny has other plans. The door swings both ways.

Watching it today, you can see in Holiday the bones of innumerable romantic comedies to come. A marriage is afoot, but the players are poorly matched. Over the course of the film, the right partners will find each other. Johnny loves Julia, whom he snagged while on vacation at Lake Placid, but they see the world differently. Johnny has a radical plan to earn enough money to travel the world for years, and settle down later. “I’ve been working since I was 10,” he tells her. “Now I want to find out why I’ve been working.” She can’t relate, but her beautiful sister, Linda (Katharine Hepburn), the self-proclaimed black sheep of the family, does. She and Johnny are both skeptical of the Seton way of life—accrue assets and happiness will follow—making them instantly attracted to each other.

The film captures Grant and Hepburn at crucial moments in their career, resulting in unusually raw performances from both. Grant did grow up working class, and he forged his lighthearted persona out of pain and suffering. He worked as a trapeze artist in the circus before coming to Hollywood, and he busts out some acrobatics in Holiday for the only time in his career. You sense that he deeply identifies with Johnny, resulting in a performance that merges sunny optimism with a deep undercurrent of melancholy. Hepburn proves a perfect counterpoint. She grew up with enormous wealth, but her acting career had stalled. Holiday came just months after theater owners took a full-page ad out in the trades labeling her “box-office poison.” She seems liberated in Holiday, summoning new depths of longing and desire. Watch the film closely, and you’ll notice her eyes lingering on Johnny when he’s not looking. We know she’s in love before she does, due to Hepburn’s insightful and moving work.

As most of the action takes place in a single home—albeit an enormous one—Holiday doesn’t stray very far from its theatrical origins. Director George Cukor wisely eschews a traditional score, instead letting the drama play out with weighty silences in between lines. It imbues the film with a profundity that runs deeper than the romantic drama. The conflict, both between classes and generations, speaks to the broad moment the material was conceived and staged, when the Roaring 20s gave way to the disillusionment of the Great Depression. Johnny’s disinterest in money is labeled “un-American” by his fiancee’s father, and his desire to live an unfettered life is borne from a rejection of the entire economic system. An even more acute illustration comes in the form of Ned (Lew Ayres), the sisters’ younger brother, who has joined his father’s company but is so miserable he spends his nights—and many of his days—in a sad, drunken stupor. Taken as a whole, it’s an incisive portrait of a lost generation trying to find itself. Some drink, some compromise, and some just want to sail away.

Certainly, Holiday wears its sadness on its sleeve, but it’s also incredibly fun. No one should dismiss the pleasures of watching two gorgeous people fall in love, especially when it’s based not just on attraction but an actual meeting of the souls. Grant and Hepburn are two of the best at this sort of thing, and they’d do it to more acclaim two years later in The Philadelphia Story. We don’t have stars like them anymore, who can make you believe in love again in a tight 95 minutes. Johnny and Linda may sail off to see the world, but the real holiday is ours.

Holiday screens at 11:30 a.m. on March 1, 12:45 p.m. on March 4, 12:10 p.m. on March 5, noon on March 6, and noon on March 7 as part of AFI Silver’s Columbia Picture Centennial Series at AFI Silver Theatre and Cultural Center. silver.afi.com. $10.