Starring Katharine Hepburn, Colin Cive and Billie Burke
Produced by RKO Radio Pictures
Let me get this out of the way: Christopher Strong takes the oddest approach to gender politics one could imagine.
On the one hand, we have Lady Cynthia (Katherine Hepburn), who may be the world’s most interesting woman. She does what she wants. She dresses how she wants. She flies all over the world and, if she can’t set an altitude record right this moment, she will settle for a distance record.
However, she falls for Christopher Strong (Colin Clive), a member of Parliament who is interesting because…he gives good speeches? I don’t know. They don’t really tell us much about him other than he is a buzz kill in every way.
Strong’s daughter is seeing a married man and he and his wife just cannot have that. Until of course, he falls for Cynthia and starts understanding why adultery might be an attractive option.
There’s an interesting tension in Christopher and Cynthia’s romance, but I’m not sure I ever bought that after rejecting every other man in the world, this is the guy to catch the independent aviator’s attention. He’s just so milquetoast as to almost not exist.
**SPOILER**
It’s hard to talk about the movie without getting into its ending. Christopher and Cynthia have separated, but he regrets it. She meanwhile decides to try for that altitude record she’d been putting off since she met him. As she climbs toward the ceiling, she rips off her oxygen mask. It’s unclear whether she is attempting suicide in spectacular fashion or simply feeling claustrophobia because of her mental state and removes it in a moment of passion. After a few moments reflection, she struggles to replace the mask, but fails. Her plane plummets to the earth, killing her instantly. We follow this with the odd coda that Christopher and his wife are headed to America via a newspaper headline.
The ending is certainly tense, but it also feels like it undermines Cynthia’s character. She’s been strong and independent. Killing herself seems an overreaction based on what we know of her. The movie presents the record attempt as dangerous, but they also present her as an incredibly competentent pilot. The cockpit is one place she is in total control. None of the end feels authentic.
Couple this with everything seemingly turning out fine for Christopher and we learn what? That adultery works out? That someone else’s death might solve your problems? It’s just an odd place to leave a film, particularly one that is at least as much about Christopher as it is Cynthia.
It’s an interesting early effort from Hepburn and Clive turns in a great performance playing against type. Still, the overall point of the movie seems confused.
C+
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