Call Me Kate

Documentary looking at the life of 4 times oscar winner Katherine Hepburn. With an apparent shortage of actual Hepburn footage, it uses created narration using someone doing an impression of the star, mixed with original footage. The film does look to analyse Hepburn as a character and what drove her forward from child through to her nineties, rather than focus as much on the specifics of her film career. There is inevitably also quite a close look at her love life particularly Spencer Tracy.

It's an interesting if not very emotionally engaging experience and with little footage of Hepburn available, the various tricks being used to tell her tale aren't wholly successful.

I didn't finish this. For one thing, it seems to be trying to be an art film of its own, so it shouldn't be called a documentary. Not that documentaries can't be made in an artful, fascinating, way, but this falls flat. I couldnt figure out who was talking and why. Why is Kate seemingly talking about herself in an interview when she is not in fact interviewed. Plus, I question the filmmaker's research. She states that Morning Glory is Hepburn's second film. Not true, The second film is Christopher Strong, with Morning Glory third. Christropher Strong, directed by the amazing Dorothy Arzner, is an incredible movie, but here it only gets short shrift. I assume that's because the director didn't bother to watch it. It's a feminist movie in which Hepburn plays a record-breaking pilot. It's possible to see, but you have to put in the time to find it . . .

I was looking forward to this about an actress and person I've long admired, but I found this to be somewhat disappointing. There's little here that is new other than some audio tapes that are sometimes hard to understand, and not terribly revelatory, and some nice home movie clips of when she was young. She was quite the force to reckon with, highly intelligent, charismatic and uniquely beautiful. The film clips are wonderful, though almost all too short with many overlooked entirely. Some of her comments are insightful and she was a woman way ahead of her time and an actress unlike any other. Just ask whoever is trying to impersonate her here, which is one of the major problems with this documentary. The narration by a person attempting, poorly, to sound like her and to present this in sort of a first person narrative just doesn't work very well at all nor does a person pretending to be her from behind, in the shadows, etc. I nearly turned this off due to these contrived annoyances, but I still find the subject matter interesting despite reading about her for decades. I was hoping to learn something new, but perhaps she has been covered so much for so long that there simply is nothing new. Most of the balance of the narrative is presented by those who were not close, if at all, to her simply due to time marching on. Still, she was a fascinating and strong woman who lived a life most of us can only dream of. One of the more prominent comments from her, the real her, made here is about how lucky and appreciative she was to have the parents she did. We too can thank them. Odd near the end, this is not a very strong piece of filmmaking which I get the impression mostly exists due to the existence of those old scratchy audio tapes.

An interesting and objective doc on Katharine Hepburn. It gives an honest and balanced portrayal of the kind of person she was. I enjoyed the objectivity of it, with many surviving family members giving their insights. It doesn't overly glorify her or unnecessarily undermines. I'm quite neutral to her celebrity and found this worth my time. There is a great deal about her childhood and the family she grew up in before her acting career. Included are audio recordings of interviews in her own voice though much is read by a voice actor. My personal takeaway is that once she knew she wanted to be famous, she became basically a quite selfish person. Not completely heartless but ultimately very self-absorbed and only attuned to what she wanted.

Some critics here have been very harsh on this documentary. But I found it very informative and sweet. Sure, for those already very familiar with Katharine Hepburn's life and work, there may not be a lot that's new. But I had not known a lot about her and so I learned a lot. It is an affectionate piece, obviously, with input from her family and from the family of her lover Spencer Tracy, but what's wrong with that? Hepburn was unlucky in that Tracy was married and so she did not get to have a traditional relationship, except for in Tracy's final years when she lived with him. But mostly in her life Hepburn was very lucky indeed. She happened to meet people in Hollywood who liked and encouraged her, who wrote for her and directed her in some of the top movies of her day. She had a wonderful and wealthy family including a wise, steadfast and feminist mother, she had good people around her as her assistants and friends. Even her first husband sounds like he was a very nice man, even though she admits she broke his heart. But aside from being lucky, Hepburn also was courageous and intelligent in standing up for herself so that she was paid well, could dress the way she wanted and did not have to compromise and play the sex object like many other actresses. Her mother taught her to get back up when she was down. Hepburn has a reputation for being somewhat cold emotionally but this documentary gives a more rounded insight into her life and character. She paved the way for female actors and characters to be actual characters as opposed to love interests, and she lived her life as she wanted it to be.