A Mística

Okay, you have a lame script about a hillbilly girl. She's emotional and immature, ignert and superstitious, grubby and mystical, with an innocent yet powerful sexuality. Who do you cast? Perhaps an actress who can project some of those qualities? Possibly someone who can do the accept properly, maybe someone in the right age group, or even someone whose background has something in it that would allow her to connect to the character? YOU might, but the producers cast the most damnably Yankee actress in Hollywood - Katherine Hepburn.

Katherine Hepburn - of New England old money, graduate of Bryn Mawr, officially inducted into the Preppie Hall of Fame, the living embodiment of well-bred hard-headed plain-spoken Yankee common sense, whose best roles are as sophisticated and professional women... cast as a ragged teenage Hillbilly outcast illiterate mystic thought to be a witch by her backwoods neighbors? Hepburn had enough Yankee common sense to try everything possible to get out of doing this role, but the idiots who ran studio had the upper hand and forced her into this little stinker. Her awkwardness shows she knows what a fool she's making of herself, but still gives it the old college try (yuk, yuk), taking this movie from ordinary badness into truly amazing eye-popping badness. I mean, classy Kate Hepburn throwing stones at the neighbors and having bug-eyed visions? You have to see this to believe it.

Without Hepburn the movie would still be terrible (but with her it's funny). It's one of these horrible condescending scripts about how ignernt and cruel them backwoods white trash is, and how being ignernt and immature is kinda sexy in a purty girl. Eeew.

(Note: Way funnier than her second-most spectacularly miscast role. In 1941 she played a Chinese peasant woman in "Dragon Seed". It's not nearly as funny, being just a bad war-effort film, it's rather dull and this one is absolutely daffy.)

Other reviewers seem to be comparing this delightful old film with standard streamlined products of the 40s and later. But "Spitfire" belongs to an older tradition, and it's a rare example of theatrical naturalism translated to film. Naturalism was always a dicey affair, attempting to study real (i.e., non-glamorous) people in folksy environments, and usually failing because written by authors of "a class above" for sensational purposes. I found this quaint vision of hill folk very appealing, representing a kind of nostalgia for Americana imagined although never real--yet nevertheless enjoyed by mainstream audiences. The young Hepburn gives an awkward but dazzling performance, fully inhabiting her naïve, sentimentalized Trigger Hicks, delivering her lines in a vigorous and truly delicious stage "Hillbilly" dialect. Don't miss a chance to travel on this strange, charming time machine.

There are some good things about Katharine Hepburn's 1934 RKO film, SPITFIRE, but they are overshadowed by the film's numerous failings. However, if you are in the correct mood to witness a "hillbilly" Hepburn or experience a fun time warp back to a time when a film like this could actually be made without being laughed at because it is so ridiculous (oh wait...I think it was!).

Anywho, Hepburn gives a fine, sensitive performance and there are some devastating closeups of her exquisite face. There is a nice subplot about how people can be judgmental of others and assume things which are not true. There was a much too contrived romance between Hepburn and Robert Young, as a city slicker out in the country wooing the "spitfire" hillbilly girl. The catch is he's married, and when she finds out she is heartbroken. The film ends on a good note with a scene of poetic brilliance. Hepburn is leaving, after being scared out of town, but promises to come back in a year for her love (or maybe much sooner, she says, as they share a kiss)! All in all, I was not unhappy I recorded this unusual film, even though stretches of it were boring. The production values seemed high, performances were good for the most part, and the score by Max Steiner was excellent. I was initially intrigued by the film's original poster art, which has great art deco style.

Just the thought of "Katharine Hepburn as a hillbilly" automatically sends many viewers into hysterics, and it's indeed jarring at first to view her as Trigger Hicks, an innocent Ozarks miss who's an ungainly combination of religious fervor, antisocial behavior, unexamined but potent sexuality, and wisecracks. Take away all your predispositions about Katharine Hepburn, though, and she's quite good in it, doing a lot of acting with her eyes and singing in a far more resonant alto than she exhibited decades later on the Broadway stage. It's a "Tobacco Road"-like melodrama of misfits in the hills, with Ralph Bellamy and Robert Young as the smart-men-from-the-city who are interested in her, and it's from a 1927 stage play that didn't run long. (One of the stage actors, Sara Haden, repeats her stage role; also in the original company was a very young Natalie Schaefer, as the wife of the Robert Young character.) It's picturesque and thoughtful and really quite touching in examining how nonconformists cope in unfriendly surroundings, and the lack of background music and deliberate pacing make it seem less manufactured and movie-fied than many contemporary offerings. Give it a chance. However, a postscript: In the mid-1970s I had occasion to tell Miss Hepburn, as she was getting into her limo, "Miss Hepburn, one of your movies is on TV locally this week, it's called 'Spitfire.'" "'Spitfire,' 'Spitfire,' she mused. "Oh, God help us all."

Any chance to see Katharine Hepburn in something I haven't seen or from her early movie career is a treat, and on that level the film is amusing, but she's horrible miscast as a Hill Billy. Her famous New England enunciation slips through, making lines like, "I'd better rustle up some Vittles" pretty ludicrous. She's so pretty and so young… it almost overcomes this major flaw. The story is an old fashioned melodrama, and there fore, a younger generation may think this pretty corny stuff, but this was the staple of American Entertainment well into the 1940's. It has its moments, but you might need to be a die-hard movie buff to appreciate it.