SYLVIA SCARLETT

US, 1935, 95 minutes, Black and white.
Katharine Hepburn, Cary Grant, Brian Aherne, Edmund Gwenn.
Directed by George Cukor.

Sylvia Scarlett has a strange reputation. The producer, Pandro S. Berman, loathed the film. It contributed to Katharine Hepburn’s reputation in the late 1930s as ‘box office poison’.

The film is based on a novel by Compton Mac Kenzie (whose novels formed the basis for films like Whisky Galore, Rockets Galore as well as the series for British television, Monarch of the Glen).

The film is about a widower, played by Edmund Gwenn, who is accompanied by his daughter Sylvia as they escape from France to England after embezzlement charges. Sylvia is disguised as a boy, Sylvester, and continues as a boy, deceiving most people. They are joined by another conman, played by Cary Grant, who helps them in some of their con tricks. However, eventually Sylvia falls in love with an artist, played by Brian Aherne, and reveals herself to be Sylvia.

The film is strong in the records of films which play with gender and sexual identity.

The film was directed by George Cukor who had directed Katharine Hepburn in Little Women and was to direct her in Holiday as well as The Philadelphia Story (both with Cary Grant). Cukor had a long career in Hollywood, making many memorable films, winning an Oscar for directing My Fair Lady and guiding a number of performers to Oscars including Ingrid Bergman, Gaslight, Ronald Colman, A Double Life, Judy Holliday, Born Yesterday, Rex Harrison, My Fair Lady.

1. How interesting and enjoyable a film? Its entertainment value?

2. The film as a Katharine Hepburn vehicle? The interest in presenting her as playing a character masquerading as a man?

3. The 1930s style of the film, black and white photography, musical background, the quality of the sound?

4. What was the predominant character of the film's comedy, drama? Which predominated? how well were they blended? A human and humane comedy drama?

5. The importance of the scene being set at Versailles? The French background, atmosphere, the transition to England via the Channel, the English atmosphere? The stance of the English background?

6. Sylvia, as a character? Her relationship with her parents, with her father and her support of him, her decision to go with him to England, on the boat, the entry into crime, her lighthearted attitude to life and to crime? The importance of the man/woman character? How did she change during the film? The ambiguities of her relationships and behaviour? (The skills which Katharine Hepburn used to create the masculine and then the feminine aspects of the character?)

7. Audience interest in the man/woman situation? What did the film say about sexuality in itself, the way that masculinity and femininity could be used, the impact on others, the truth? Did this seem a bizarre treatment of the theme? Or an interesting and humorous treatment?

8. The atmosphere of stealing, for example, the street scene, robbing the sick?

9. The characterization of Sylvia's father, the English type living in France, his gambling attitudes, his skills in robbery, the comic aspects of his character, the pathos? His drinking, acting the clown in their show, his infatuation, his becoming mad with the infatuation and drink, the tragedy of his death?

10. How attractive a hero was Jim? His initial crookedness with the father and daughter on the ship, in the train? Exploiting them and joining them? The skills in getting money from the people in the streets, from the maid who would be a singer? His exasperation? His relationship to father and daughter? What made him finally decide to help Sylvia? His using the Russian noble?

11. How heroic a hero was Michael? As an English type, wealthy playboy attitude, relationship with women, attraction towards Sylvia, her infatuation with him, his discarding her? The discovery of the truth and the madcap kind of chase at the end with its revelation of real feelings?

12. The maid who wanted to be a singer? The comedy aspects of her characterization, her joining the troupe, the infatuation, her empty-headedness?

13. The Russian countess, an exaggerated character, a melodramatic character, with Michael, with Sylvia, with Jim and the would-be suicide? Her being tricked?

14. How well delineated were the characters? Or were they types for the comedy-drama? What classic status has this film now?