Christopher Strong

This film is Katharine Hepburn's second film and her first in a starring role. In her first film, 1932's "A Bill of Divorcement", Billie Burke had starred with Hepburn fourth billed. Here the situation has reversed itself, and Hepburn supplants Burke in more ways than one. Hepburn plays Lady Cynthia Darrington, a member of the British gentry whose family has lost its money. As a result, she pursues aviation for both her love of it and for money to try and restore the family fortune. She has forsaken love up to this point in her life, and as the result of a human scavenger hunt at a party attended by one of her friends, she winds up at the party because she is a virgin, and Christopher Strong (Colin Clive) winds up there because he is a faithful husband to Billie Burke's character. The two meet, fall in love, and eventually this leads to the loss of what distinguished both of them in the first place.

There are several things that make this film interesting - not the least of which being that Hepburn's role turns out to be semi-autobiographical. In actuality Hepburn was an athletic and independent woman of aristocratic roots who fell for a married Spencer Tracy who also never technically divorced his wife. Then there's that metallic moth suit complete with antennae that Cynthia wears to a party - yikes! And the middle-aged Lord Strong doesn't even do a double take when she walks in wearing this outfit. So much for the stuffy image of the British aristocracy. The ending is odd since it doesn't seem consistent with Cynthia's strong independent streak. Her solution to her dilemma when she realizes that, although Strong loves her, he would only actually leave his wife out of a sense of duty to Cynthia, seems completely out of character. Also, Billie Burke does such a good job of playing the wronged wife who suffers in silence and dignity that it is really hard to sympathize with anyone but her. Finally, the title is a bit of a mystery. The title character, Christopher Strong, is really secondary to Hepburn's Cynthia Darrington, and I can't help but wonder why the film wasn't titled after Hepburn's character instead.

Director Dorothy Arzner, the only female director in Hollywood during this time, certainly took some chances with this one. Some of the film worked and some of it didn't, but I don't think it would have had a chance without Hepburn in the lead. I recommend this film to anyone interested in the evolution of Hepburn's acting style.

Sir CHRISTOPHER STRONG, staunch family man and Conservative MP, finds himself falling in love with a free-spirited aviatrix.

Given splendid production values by RKO Radio Pictures, this high-class soap opera proved to be an excellent showcase for the talents of young Katharine Hepburn. Tall, angular, tomboyish, in a role patterned after Amelia Earhart, Hepburn is utterly fascinating as the woman who's never loved. Whether striding about in men's clothing or swathed in an outrageous moth costume, she makes the heartache & jubilation of her character play across her expressive features. It is almost painful to try imagining anyone else in the role. Her final scene, as she gives the ultimate sacrifice, is especially poignant.

Colin Clive seems an unlikely choice as the object of Hepburn's passion, but he acts his part with great earnestness, deftly underplaying what could have easily been a stiff & cardboard characterization. In a serious role, the wonderful Billie Burke skillfully delineates the agony of the unloved wife. Like Hepburn, she remains in the memory long after the film ends.

Helen Chandler & Irene Browne, as Clive's daughter & sister respectively, do well with their portrayals of socially irresponsible females. Ralph Forbes, as an upper class philanderer, also resonates in an important supporting role; here was an actor with the talent & charm to have become a major Hollywood star, but it was not to be.

Pioneering director Dorothy Arzner includes subtle suggestions of the sapphist in Hepburn's character, to be rejected or respected by individual viewers. As it is, certain situations in the plot show its pre-Production Code status.

CHRISTOPHER STRONG (RKO Radio, 1933), directed by Dorothy Arzner, with a haunting score by Max Steiner, began production as "A Great Desire." Starring Katharine Hepburn in her second feature film following her successful debut in A BILL OF DIVORCEMENT (1932), it pairs her opposite Colin Clive for the only time. Set in England, she plays Lady Cynthia Darrington, an enthusiastic aviatrix (possibly inspired on Amelia Earheart), who is over 21 and has never had a lover or an affair because she makes no time for it. All that changes when she meets Sir Christopher Strong (Colin Clive), whose life is not only absorbed in his political career, but with his wife (Billie Burke) and his single adult daughter (Helen Chandler) who has a married lover (Ralph Forbes), but becomes her husband after he is finally granted his divorce.

CHRISTOPHER STRONG is particularly interesting mainly because of some pre-production code stuff, and seeing Kate playing "the other woman" on screen for the only time who meets her dismal climax, something not common in a Hepburn movie. There is even a "bedroom scene" which camera focuses mainly on Kate's hand by the lamp while the viewer only hears some mono dialog exchange between her and Chris before she turns off the lights, leaving something to the viewer's imagination. By today's standards, this is nothing compared to what Hollywood would make of this particular scene today. I won't reveal any more about the plot, but this is early Kate Hepburn as the liberated woman with carefree ideas that come back to punish her. Maybe casting Hepburn in this type of role was RKO 's way of trying to develop her into a tragic heroine like MGM's own Greta Garbo. Worth a look, however, especially seeing Colin Clive in something other than that as Dr. Henry Frankenstein, his most famous performance(s) in Universal's FRANKENSTEIN (1931) and THE BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN (1935). CHRISTOPHER STRONG, which formerly played on the American Movie Classics cable channel prior to 2001, can be seen occasionally on Turner Classic Movies. It was once available on video cassette through the Nostalgia Merchant and RKO Home Video, but presently, it's out of print. Look quickly for future Warner Brothers actress Margaret Lindsay appearing in a small role as a girl who wants to get Cynthia's autograph. Not a box office success when released, but better roles for Kate in 1933 would soon follow with MORNING GLORY and LITTLE WOMEN. (**1/2)

The film does a wonderful job of integrating newsreel footage with its narrative. I assume that Lindbergh's triumphal Broadway procession after his return from Paris in 1927 was the basis for Darrington's ticker tape parade after her round the world flight. It was hard to believe that her aircraft insisted on such a dangerous entrance to its cockpit. The pilot had to climb in while only a couple of feet from a rotating propeller (or "airscrew" as the Brits would say). Hepburn is utterly convincing as an aviation obsessed and sexually neutral aristocrat. Her love affair with Strong is nicely contrasted with that of his daughter with her boyfriend. The film also shows how a missed appointment -- insignificant to one person but all the world to the other -- can have fatal consequences. Well-made, well-sequenced -- the kind of film they used to make in wonderful black and white.

It's ironical this film to be titled as the main male character, above all when this raises among film classics for its accurate depiction, not only of the main female one, but also of the female secondary roles. It is probably due to the fact that it is directed by a woman, but the talent of Arzner goes beyond through accurate cinematography and a sense for lyrical melodrama far from the soapy tone of the majority of its contemporaneous. Katharine Hepburn is exulting as the brave woman always a step further its era, here in love for the first time with a married man. Particularly moving is the last sequence, with Hepburn trying to achieve the altitude record with her airplane as she confronts the most relevant facts of her story. A little gem to be discovered.