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La Phalène d'argent

Original title: Christopher Strong
  • 1933
  • Approved
  • 1h 18m
IMDb RATING
6.3/10
1.9K
YOUR RATING
Katharine Hepburn and Colin Clive in La Phalène d'argent (1933)
Period DramaTragedyActionAdventureDramaRomance

A famous female flier and a member of Parliament drift into a potentially disastrous affair.A famous female flier and a member of Parliament drift into a potentially disastrous affair.A famous female flier and a member of Parliament drift into a potentially disastrous affair.

  • Director
    • Dorothy Arzner
  • Writers
    • Zoe Akins
    • Gilbert Frankau
  • Stars
    • Katharine Hepburn
    • Colin Clive
    • Billie Burke
  • See production info at IMDbPro
  • IMDb RATING
    6.3/10
    1.9K
    YOUR RATING
    • Director
      • Dorothy Arzner
    • Writers
      • Zoe Akins
      • Gilbert Frankau
    • Stars
      • Katharine Hepburn
      • Colin Clive
      • Billie Burke
    • 34User reviews
    • 19Critic reviews
  • See production info at IMDbPro
  • See production info at IMDbPro
    • Awards
      • 1 win total

    Photos35

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    Top cast19

    Edit
    Katharine Hepburn
    Katharine Hepburn
    • Lady Cynthia Darrington
    Colin Clive
    Colin Clive
    • Sir Christopher Strong
    Billie Burke
    Billie Burke
    • Lady Elaine Strong
    Helen Chandler
    Helen Chandler
    • Monica Strong
    Ralph Forbes
    Ralph Forbes
    • Harry Rawlinson
    Irene Browne
    Irene Browne
    • Carrie Valentine
    Jack La Rue
    Jack La Rue
    • Carlo
    Desmond Roberts
    Desmond Roberts
    • Bryce Mercer
    Agostino Borgato
    Agostino Borgato
    • Fortune Teller
    • (uncredited)
    Lita Chevret
    Lita Chevret
    • Party Guest
    • (uncredited)
    Sherry Hall
    • American Radio Announcer
    • (uncredited)
    Tiny Jones
    Tiny Jones
    • Woman with Organ Grinder
    • (uncredited)
    Margaret Lindsay
    Margaret Lindsay
    • Autograph Seeker at Party
    • (uncredited)
    Gwendolyn Logan
    • Bradford
    • (uncredited)
    Miki Morita
    • Japanese Radio Announcer
    • (uncredited)
    Paul Ralli
    Paul Ralli
    • Tango Dancer
    • (uncredited)
    Zena Savine
    • Elaine's Maid
    • (uncredited)
    Pat Somerset
    Pat Somerset
    • The Second Bobby
    • (uncredited)
    • Director
      • Dorothy Arzner
    • Writers
      • Zoe Akins
      • Gilbert Frankau
    • All cast & crew
    • Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

    User reviews34

    6.31.8K
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    Featured reviews

    10Ron Oliver

    Hepburn Soars

    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.
    6AlsExGal

    An interesting role for Hepburn early in her career

    This film is Katharine Hepburn's second film and her first in a starring role. In her first film, 1932's "A Bill of Divorcement", Billie Burke had starred with Hepburn fourth billed. Here the situation has reversed itself, and Hepburn supplants Burke in more ways than one. Hepburn plays Lady Cynthia Darrington, a member of the British gentry whose family has lost its money. As a result, she pursues aviation for both her love of it and for money to try and restore the family fortune. She has forsaken love up to this point in her life, and as the result of a human scavenger hunt at a party attended by one of her friends, she winds up at the party because she is a virgin, and Christopher Strong (Colin Clive) winds up there because he is a faithful husband to Billie Burke's character. The two meet, fall in love, and eventually this leads to the loss of what distinguished both of them in the first place.

    There are several things that make this film interesting - not the least of which being that Hepburn's role turns out to be semi-autobiographical. In actuality Hepburn was an athletic and independent woman of aristocratic roots who fell for a married Spencer Tracy who also never technically divorced his wife. Then there's that metallic moth suit complete with antennae that Cynthia wears to a party - yikes! And the middle-aged Lord Strong doesn't even do a double take when she walks in wearing this outfit. So much for the stuffy image of the British aristocracy. The ending is odd since it doesn't seem consistent with Cynthia's strong independent streak. Her solution to her dilemma when she realizes that, although Strong loves her, he would only actually leave his wife out of a sense of duty to Cynthia, seems completely out of character. Also, Billie Burke does such a good job of playing the wronged wife who suffers in silence and dignity that it is really hard to sympathize with anyone but her. Finally, the title is a bit of a mystery. The title character, Christopher Strong, is really secondary to Hepburn's Cynthia Darrington, and I can't help but wonder why the film wasn't titled after Hepburn's character instead.

    Director Dorothy Arzner, the only female director in Hollywood during this time, certainly took some chances with this one. Some of the film worked and some of it didn't, but I don't think it would have had a chance without Hepburn in the lead. I recommend this film to anyone interested in the evolution of Hepburn's acting style.
    8jrgirones

    A little gem in Hepburn's career

    It's ironical this film to be titled as the main male character, above all when this raises among film classics for its accurate depiction, not only of the main female one, but also of the female secondary roles. It is probably due to the fact that it is directed by a woman, but the talent of Arzner goes beyond through accurate cinematography and a sense for lyrical melodrama far from the soapy tone of the majority of its contemporaneous. Katharine Hepburn is exulting as the brave woman always a step further its era, here in love for the first time with a married man. Particularly moving is the last sequence, with Hepburn trying to achieve the altitude record with her airplane as she confronts the most relevant facts of her story. A little gem to be discovered.
    7bkoganbing

    Title Should Have Been Cynthia Darrington

    I'm not quite sure why the title of this film is not Lady Cynthia Darrington since the film rises and falls on the action of Hepburn's character and not on Colin Clive's title role of Christopher Strong.

    Clive is a most proper member of Parliament, probably a Tory, who through a treasure hunt, a la My Man Godfrey, he meets Hepburn who is a young titled woman who has an interest in aviation. In fact she's the British version of Amelia Earhart.

    Clive and wife Billie Burke have a daughter, Helen Chandler, who is something of a wild child. She's having an affair with the unhappily married Ralph Forbes. But before long it's Clive and Hepburn who get involved.

    Colin Clive gives us a perfect portrayal of a man going through midlife crisis when everything just seems to settle in a dull routine. He's so taken by Hepburn's vitality and independence that their affair has an inevitability about it.

    Dorothy Arzner one of the few women directors around at that point also gives us one of Kate's very first feminist icon roles. Her first film, A Bill of Divorcement, had Kate as a dutiful daughter who gives up her man to care for an insane father. Kate has some critical choices to make in Christopher Strong as well.

    What she does might not make sense to today's audience, but made perfectly good sense in post Victorian Great Britain. She and Clive make a wonderful pair of tragic lovers in a drama that while old fashioned still holds up.
    6funkyfry

    B+ grade melodrama

    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.

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    Storyline

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    Did you know

    Edit
    • Trivia
      Cynthia's plane is a Lockheed Vega 5, the same type as was owned and flown by Amelia Earhart.
    • Goofs
      After Carlo and Monica drive away from the party, Cynthia and Christopher are walking in the garden, when a moving shadow of the camera that is tracking them falls across some hanging branches in the foreground.
    • Quotes

      Lady Cynthia Darrington: I wouldn't have loved you if you'd been a usual man. And you wouldn't have loved me if I'd been a woman who didn't take this kind of thing seriously.

    • Connections
      Featured in Hollywood the Golden Years: The RKO Story: A Woman's Lot (1987)
    • Soundtracks
      Nearer My God To Thee
      (uncredited)

      Music by Lowell Mason (1856)

      Lyrics by Sarah F. Adams

      Played by an unidentified organ grinder

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    FAQ17

    • How long is Christopher Strong?Powered by Alexa

    Details

    Edit
    • Release date
      • March 31, 1933 (United States)
    • Country of origin
      • United States
    • Languages
      • English
      • French
      • German
      • Russian
      • Japanese
      • Latin
    • Also known as
      • Fruto dorado
    • Filming locations
      • RKO Studios - 780 N. Gower Street, Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, USA(Studio)
    • Production company
      • RKO Radio Pictures
    • See more company credits at IMDbPro

    Box office

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    • Budget
      • $284,000 (estimated)
    See detailed box office info on IMDbPro

    Tech specs

    Edit
    • Runtime
      • 1h 18m(78 min)
    • Color
      • Black and White
    • Aspect ratio
      • 1.37 : 1

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