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| CHRISTOPHER STRONG (1933) |
An RKO Radio Picture
B&W, 77 minutes
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CAST
Lady Cynthia Darrington: Katharine Hepburn
Sir Christopher Strong: Colin Clive
Lady Elaine Strong: Billie Burke
Monica Strong: Helen Chandler
Harry Rawlinson: Ralph Forbes
Carrie Valentin: Irene Browne
Carlo: Jack La Rue
Bryce Mercer: Desmond Roberts
Bradford, the Maid: Gwendolyn Logan
Fortune Teller: Agostino Borgato
Girl at Party: Margaret Lindsay
Mechanic: Donald Stewart
Second Maid: Zena Savina
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CREDITS
Director: Dorothy Arzner
Producer: David O. Selznick
Associate Producer: Pandro S. Berman
Scenarist: Zoë Akins
Based on the novel by: Gilbert Frankau
Photographer: Bert Glennon
Art Director: Van Nest Polglase
Associate Art Director: Charles Kirk
Editor: Arthur Roberts
Sound Recorder: Hugh McDowell
Musical Score: Max Steiner
Costumer: Howard Greer
Makeup Artist: Mel Burns
Special Effects: Vernon Walker
Transitions: Slavko Vorkapich
Assistant Directors: Edward Killy, Tommy Atkins
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SYNOPSIS
As the chance result of a "treasure hunt," a single woman and a married man are introduced. She is Lady Cynthia Darrington, a career-minded aviatrix with no time for love in her young life. He is Sir Christopher Strong, a good husband and the father of a marriageable daughter, whose life has been completely absorbed in his political career. They are wracked by a love that neither can deny, and their lives become hopelessly entwined.
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CRITIQUES
"She (Hepburn) fascinates by her strange beauty and inescapable magnetism, by her verve, her harshness and her tenderness, with the enormous advantage of making every mood reflect a mental state of utter sincerity and conviction. Easily the most important newcomer, although Mae West is the supreme box-office draw of the moment, Miss Hepburn is provocative and distinctive and her vibrant intelligence entitles her to the best and most carefully chosen story material."
- Herbert Lusk, Los Angeles Times, 1933
"That troubled, masque-like face, the high, strident, raucous, rasping voice, the straight, broad-shouldered boyish figure - perhaps they all may grate upon you, but they compel attention, and they fascinate an audience. She is a distinct, definite, positive personality - the first since Garbo."
- Regina Crewe, New York American, 1933
"Playing with a sort of harsh, gruff directness that manages to seem both gallant and tender, Miss Hepburn offers a characterization of a puzzled, grudging sentimentalist that combines emotional effectiveness with a certain air of level-headed sanity."
- Richard Watts Jr., New York Herald Tribune, 1933
"An arch, high-strung, sickeningly noble Katharine Hepburn movie, but one of the rare movies told from a woman's sexual point of view. Directed by Dorothy Arzner from a screenplay by Zoë Akins, it's the story of a record-breaking English aviatrix who falls in love with a distinguished political figure (Colin Clive). As soon as they go to bed together, he insists - late on the very first night - that she not fly in the contest she is entered in. It's the intelligent woman's primal post-coital scene. In movies up to the 70s, this primal scene was never played out satisfactorily; the woman always gave in, either in the paste-up screwball style that provided the fake resolutions of the 40s, or, as in this picture, fatally. (The heroine commits suicide.) The directing seems enervated and the film was a flop, but it's not one that independent-minded women can easily forget. Hepburn is exquisitely gaunt and boyish in her sleek, high-fashion gowns, including one that she says makes her look like a moth. It does; the movie is a moth-and-flame story."
- Pauline Kael, The New Yorker
"Early Hollywood movies (re)claimed for feminist film history sometimes require complex analysis to explain their relevance, but this teaming of Arzner and Hepburn is absolutely central to an understanding of women's place within classical Hollywood. Hepburn plays pioneer aviatrix Cynthia Darrington, courted by Christopher Strong (though why the title should bear his name and not hers is a mystery). She plays him along but independently pursues her career, telling Strong 'Don't ever stop me doing what I want', only to fall into typical Hollywood compromise and find herself pregnant by her (married) lover in the last reel. Suicide is offered as the only way out, but even in her dying moments (a high-altitude record-breaking flight) she rebels against society's required sacrifice and tries to replace her oxygen mask. Fascinating precisely for the vacillation of its central (female) character, and for the way in which aviation (itself a uniquely 20th century activity virtually closed to women) is used as a metaphor for film-making and women's attempts to gain a foothold in that male-dominated territory."
- Martyn Auty, Time Out
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Swedish poster
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Lobby card
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Lobby card
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Katharine Hepburn
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Katharine Hepburn
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Katharine Hepburn
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Katharine Hepburn
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Katharine Hepburn
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Katharine Hepburn, Colin Clive
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Ralph Forbes, Helen Chandler, Katharine Hepburn
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On the set: Katharine Hepburn
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