Une femme se rebelle

Pamela (Katharine Hepburn) and Flora are the Thistlewaite sisters living under their controlling unloving father in the patriarchal system of Victorian England. They are both excited to be set up with husbands. Pamela's man Gerald cannot marry her due to his situation. Tragedy strikes Flora. Pamela struggles alone with a love child in a man's world.

Katharine Hepburn became box office poison with this as her third flop in a row. I do wonder if her righteous feminism has anything to do with the bad press. The story is one of melodramatic tragic romance. More could have been done with the romantic storyline but that would detract from the independent woman angle. There is a bit of rushed feel to some of the plotting. It's adapted from a novel and that can sometimes rush a story. After all, the movie spans a lifetime. It has one really fun scene with a donkey. Otherwise, this is a fine melodrama.

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.

Apart from a wonderful plot, superb acting from Katherine Hepburn, Herbert Marshall as a charming leading man, as a historical film costumer, this one goes on my A-list.

I've only seen about 3/4 of the film -- caught it on Turner classic movies channel and got hooked. Don't know what the costuming in the early part of the flick was like, but from the time I tuned in, which covered the mid to late 1860s through the 1890s, I was VERY impressed.

The 1930s and 40's "golden age of Hollywood" was not a particularly good era for accurate costuming in film -- the artistic/visual impact generally seemed to trump any concerns about authenticity. And the 50s, 60's and 70's got broadly worse.

This film stands out from the 1930's crop BIG time.

The 1865-1870 period is difficult to get right and is seldom portrayed -- elliptical hoops, small bonnets, tailored details -- all presaging the "first bustle era" of the early 70's but not yet at the bustle stage. Costume Designer Walter Plunkett gets it right and designed some lovely, authentic gowns. The film seems to flash forward pretty rapidly to the late 1870's to early 1880s "natural form" era and then the 1890s, so both bustle eras are missed out, but the periods he covers, he does RIGHT.

Ironically, this is the same Walter Plunkett famous for his gorgeous, yet woefully inaccurate costumes for Vivian Leigh in Gone With the Wind -- however, if you look at that film, the costuming for Melanie Wilkes and the supporting & background women is actually pretty good, as are the various male civilian outfits. Alas, the stuff that's most remembered is the stuff that's wrong - Scarlett's clothes and the godawful uniforms.

Suggests to me that the great Plunkett richly deserved his reputation, DID understand historical costuming and must have been working to some broader artistic judgement call on the part of either the director / production designer or producers on GWTW.

With no such constraints on "A Woman Rebels", he did a phenomenal job.

-- Kathryn Coombs Historical Wardrobe, Ltd Historical Entertainment, LLC

I think this RKO melodrama distills Hepburn's strengths in her early years even better than in her celebrated performance of Jo March in "Little Women". Kate was not the kind of actress who could play common or weak (although she was common but strong in the under-appreciated "Spitfire"). During this period, she mostly played strong and independent characters.

"A Woman Rebels" is a very good story about a Victorian woman who dares to be independent at a time when women were expected to get married. A career was considered out of the question. I think it's very well written and directed with good performances, especially from Herbert Marshall and Van Heflin (in his debut film performance).

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.