La Phalène d'argent

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)

None too subtle story of a famous aviatrix (Hepburn -- the movie calls her a "girl flier") in love with a married nobleman (Clive). They put off consumating their affair, even muttering to each other in one ridiculous scene about how "special" they are. Burke turns in a quality performance given a very standard mother role, giving her character the convincing quality it needs to withstand the transition from anger to frustration to final acceptance of the situation. A story that could not have been filmed this way 2 or 3 years later. Includes Hepburn in her infamous "moth suit." Clive does well, and Hepburn is great, but given how it's written and (especially) how she plays it, it's no surprise this film did nothing to improve her standing in the eyes of the more prurient elements in the audience. Perhaps, even, some of their later vindictiveness (including placing her on the list of so-called "box-office poison") could be seen as their own reaction to her character transferred onto Katherine Hepburn. Well directed and photographed. Unconvincing ending unhinges the movie in its final reel, but I guess last reel reconciliations by way of death were soon to be the rule in Hollywood (as they always had been in more conservative film centers), so it's good Selznick got in fairly early in the game. Will be remembered more by Hepburn's fans than by fans of good, solid movies, because she provides many of its most memorable moments.

Christopher Strong is a rather short and underbaked movie. The film starts out with a young woman and her boyfriend participating in a treasure hunt where they have to find a woman over twenty who has never had a love affair and a man who has been married over 5 years who has never had an affair. The woman brings her father, the titular Christopher Strong, along and her boyfriend finds a career driven aviator Cynthia Darrington, who will cop to being over twenty and having had no boyfriends. There is an immediate attraction between Christopher and Cynthia and the bulk of the movie is devoted to the eventual consummation of their love affair and the consequences that follow.

This was only Hepburn's second movie, but Darrington is a classic Hepburn role, independent, honest, and tomboyish. Colin Clive is really too young for the role he was meant to play and has ridiculously little chemistry with Hepburn. They barely register as a couple at all.

Unless you're a fan of one of the stars or an Arzner completist, this pre-code film isn't really worth your time.

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.