Film Review
After her impressive debut in George Cukor's
A Bill of Divorcement (1932),
Katharine Hepburn is firing on all cylinders in her first leading role
as a driven woman aviator in this engaging melodrama, adapted from a
novel by Gilbert Frankau. Hepburn is feminist fodder par
excellence and is more than capable of playing a strong-willed femme
fatale who genuinely looks as if she prefers a cramped cockpit to a
cosy bridal suite. Colin Clive, fine actor though he is, appears
uncomfortable playing opposite such an overpowering female presence and
Billie Burke, an actress you love to hate, doesn't even get a look
in. This is Kath's film from start to finish, and when she
suddenly turns up dressed as a moth (in a tight-fitting silver
lamé costume, complete with antennae) you have to pinch yourself
to make sure you're not dreaming.
Not surprisingly, given its obvious feminist overtones and
preponderance of female characters, the ironically titled
Christopher Strong was directed by
a woman, in fact the only woman director working in Hollywood at the
time: Dorothy Arzner. Lady Cynthia (the part played so memorably
by Hepburn, with and without antennae) is typical of the tough,
independently minded women that cropped up in Arzner's films, and it is
no great stretch of the imagination to see that she might, like Arzner
herself, be a lesbian (her passion for aviation being a convenient
smokescreen to conceal her lack of interest in men). In any
event, Hepburn is effortlessly more butch than her co-star Colin Clive
(by at least three orders of magnitude) and still manages to be the
most ravishing woman on the planet.
Uninhibited by the censorship constraints that came in with the
Production Code a short time after the film was made, Arzner is able to
portray Lady Cynthia as a sympathetic character without the need to
cast judgement on her for committing the cardinal sin of
adultery. (Once the Code had come in, films had to make it clear
that adulteresses were punished for their 'sins' and shown to be
immoral). Arzner shows her artistry in a few inspired scenes,
notably the expressionistic flashback denoument and the bedroom
sequence in which the camera is fixed on Lady Cynthia's hand and lower
arm as the two lovers exchange sweet words, discretely out of camera
shot.
As far as 1930s melodramas go,
Christopher
Strong is a reasonably satisfying example of its kind,
although it is let down on two fronts: its far from perfect
casting (Hepburn deserved a more charismatic co-star than Colin Clive -
Ronald Colman would have been a much better choice) and its overly
mechanical plot. Even before the film manages to drag itself to
its midpoint, it is clear how it is all going to end, and there are few
things more irksome than watching a film pan out exactly as you
imagined it would. The irony is that had the Production Code been
in force the screenwriters would have been obliged to change the ending
to something slightly less nihilistic, and that might have been to the
film's advantage. Whatever failings the film has are, however,
more than made up for by Katharine Hepburn's deliriously weird close
encounter with lepidoptery - so say nothing of her flying leathers...
© James Travers 2013
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.
Film Synopsis
For a bet, socialite Monica Strong brings together her father, the
English Member of Parliament Christopher Strong, and committed aviatrix
Lady Cynthia Darrington. So devoted is she to her flying exploits
that Lady Cynthia has never fallen in love - until the moment she meets
Mr Strong. As they embark on an illicit love affair, Lady Cynthia
agrees to give up her dangerous hobby. Strong's wife, Lady
Elaine, soon discovers her husband's infidelity but is unable to bring
herself to confront him with this knowledge. Instead, she turns
her disapproving eye towards her daughter, insisting that she will not
attend her marriage to a divorced man. When, several months
later, Lady Cynthia receives the news that Monica is expecting a child,
she decides she must give up Strong, even though she is herself
pregnant...
© James Travers
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.