Une femme se rebelle

"A Woman Rebels" was a big money loser when it debuted. I think much of it was because it was a very strongly feminist film...even by 1936's standards...and most folks weren't ready to see a movie with such modern sensibilities...especially the notion of a single woman having a baby.

The movie is set during the mid-late Victorian era. Pamela (Katharine Hepburn) and her sister Flora have a father (Donald Crisp) who is extremely cold, detached and loveless. He also is angry because Pamela wants more out of life than was typical of a woman of the day. She wants to read, educate herself and be something other than just a dutiful wife...and he is determined to marry her off like her sister. However, Pamela falls for a rogue and soon finds herself pregnant. To hide this, she goes to stay with Flora...and when Flora's husband dies as does Flora, Pamela pretends that her new baby is her sister's. She also does the unthinkable...she gets a job and eventually becomes a very modern and emancipated lady.

This is a very well made film but as I said the notion of a single mother must have not sat well with folks. Worth seeing and among the actress's better early films.

Katharine Hepburn shines as always in this entertaining film that tries to focus on the raise of feminism in the last mid-century. The subject is interesting enough and so is the personality of the main character, played consistently by Miss Hepburn in a mixture of strength and frailty, but unfortunately this ends being a soapy melodrama. Extremely watchable, but could have been a more relevant approach to feminism.

Katharine Hepburn did "A Woman Rebels" in 1936, when she was under contract to RKO Studios. She had a string of not so successful films prior to this, although made a sensational debut in "Bill of Divorcement" in 1932 and the wonderful "Alice Adams" in 1935. Hepburn basically plays herself here, all theatrical mannerisms and that light, slightly shrill voice. We are not so sure how to take the character of Pamela, although we guess from the title she will make some sort of stance for women's rights, circa mid-1800's; and indeed she does. Donald Crisp has a nice turn as her cold dominating father, and a young Van Heflin as one of Pamela's suitors is barely recognizable. Herbert Marshall is good as the man who loves Pamela through many decades. The soap suds are laid on pretty thick, and the film is not one of Hepburn's more memorable films. Still, for true Hepburn fans, it is always good to watch her in the earlier days. Fortunately for Hepburn, better roles were ahead in the decades to come. Hepburn leaving RKO was the best thing she did for her career.

In the pantheon of feminist films that Katherine Hepburn did in her career, A Woman Rebels definitely belongs. Even though this Victorian costume drama failed at the box office, seen today it's manifesto for the feminist cause and altogether proper for the daughter of a suffragette to have brought to the screen.

Kate and her sister Elizabeth Allan are being raised as proper Victorian ladies by their widowed father Donald Crisp which means no rights at all. Liz dutifully accepts her lot, but not Kate. Liz accepts David Manners a young naval lieutenant as a husband picked out by Crisp, but Kate has a fling with Van Heflin that's left her pregnant. And Heflin's engaged to another proper Victorian lady to boot.

Kate goes off to Italy to live with her sister while Manners is on duty. Allan is also expecting, but after Manners is killed in action, Allan dies of a broken heart. On Allan's deathbed she and Hepburn decide to raise Hepburn's expected as her niece rather than her daughter.

Back in the United Kingdom, Hepburn goes to work for a woman's magazine and under her direction the publication becomes a feminist manifesto for its time. Still old sins have a way of coming back to haunt one and they do Kate in a most peculiar way.

Herbert Marshall is in A Woman Rebels as Kate's faithful suitor and British nineteenth century diplomat. He looks earnest and faithful much like a pet collie, but in fairness the role isn't all that much.

One can certainly see what attracted Hepburn to A Woman Rebels. It's very message was parlor talk in the Hepburn household when she was growing up. Still the film does have a lot of unresolved situations, mostly due to the Code being firmly in place now and flexing its censoring muscles.

Kate's co-star Van Heflin was pretty unknown at this time and she would pick him to co-star with her as well as Joseph Cotten in The Philadelphia Story when Hollywood pronounced her box office poison. Though she didn't pick him for the screen version, she was the one who got him an MGM contract when she went there and from there Heflin became a star.

A Woman Rebels is a story which probably would have been better told now than back in the day. Perhaps someone like Gwyneth Paltrow will take up where Kate the Great left off.

Katherine Hepburn had already made Little Women, and a bunch of her "names" films of the early 1930s. here, she's Pamela, headstrong, outspoken, and thirsty for knowledge. for which she is reprimanded. Dad is Donald Crisp, with the downright upright british accent. and comes down on Pamela when she gets caught reading and trying to improve herself. the awesome Lucile Watson (Mother, in The Women!) is her governess, and encourages her to read and learn. Van Heflin has a small part as well. Pamela meets Thomas, who seems to work for the embassy. (Herb Marshall was seventeen years older than Hepburn. ) the picture is great, but the sound is pretty rough. Trials and tribulations for Pamela and her sister while in Italy. so they head home. and bump into Thomas. again. he wants to spend more time with her, but Pamela has plans to work. and that just wasn't common, or appreciated at the time. directed by Mark Sandrich. died at 44 of a heart attack. had directed Top Hat and Gay Divorce, two really fun films! novel by Netta Syrett, who actually had been born in 1865, so she would have been twenty in 1885 ! sounds like the story of her own life. or an acquaintance. or who she wanted to be. sadly, the old time customs and slow pace of the story keep the film dragging a bit. it's certainly interesting as a Hepburn film, and was considered one of her "loser" films. it's also a standout film as an early pro-women-equality film.