QUALITY STREET

US, 1937, 82 minutes, Black and White.
Katharine Hepburn, Franchot Tone, Fay Bainter. Eric Blore. Cora Witherspoon, Estelle Winwood.
Directed by George Stevens.

Quality Street is a play by J.M. Barrie and directed by George Stevens who was to make Gunga Din, Penny Serenade at this time. The film is an English period melodrama and a vehicle for Katharine Hepburn. She is quite good and had appeared some years earlier in the Barrie adaptation of The Little Minister. The film has an old-fashioned atmosphere and at times is quite quaint but nevertheless enjoyable.

1. The impact of this film? As a film of the 30s, now? A Katharine Hepburn vehicle? The tone of the title. its ironies?

2. The atmosphere of J.M. Barrie's plays? Their old world atmosphere? Re-creation of period in style and manner? Characters within this specialised environment? Human issues within this environment? The atmosphere of the 19th century? How appropriate for 20th century audiences?

3. The old-world style and yet the content and the treatment as romantic soap opera? Did the characterisations and the situations transcend romantic sentimental soap-opera?

4. How well did the film re-create the English world at the turn of the 17th century? The atmosphere of English village life? The preoccupations with the trivia of village life? Attitudes on Quality Street? The contrast with the atmosphere of the Napoleonic wars.. patriotism, men enlisting, the effect of the war (even though remote) on the people in the village?

5. The film's focus on the Throssell sisters: entering into their world, into their house, their manner, profession? The details of their behaviour? The contrast between Fanny and Phoebe? Fanny as the older sister. the spinster? Phoebe and her not wanting to finish like Fanny? The bonds between the two?

6. The world of the doctor? The build-up to his being a romantic hero? Phoebe's expectation of his proposal and her disappointment when he enlisted? Her romantic attitudes towards him? Idealising him? His enthusiasm for the war. his joy in telling Phoebe. his marching along with the enlised men?

7. How well did the film make the transition of ten years pass? Audience response in imagination to the wars, the passing of time.. Phoebe getting older and unmarried? The experience of the doctor at war?

8. The doctor and the welcome after the war? The return to normality? His love for Phoebe.. the experience of Phoebe's pretending to be her niece? His bewildered reaction to the advances of Phoebe?

9. Fanny and her getting older. a normal spinster? Her concern for Phoebe? Her reaction to Phoebe's deception?

10. What had happened to Phoebe over the ten years? How spinsterish had she become? Her way of life.. manner, talk? Her regrets for the past? What motivated her pretence? The contrast in the two personalities that she portrayed? (Katharine Hepburn's style in presenting the two characters?) To what purpose the deception?

11. The farcical aspects of the deception situation: at home, at the dance? Her pretence? Her knowing of the truth?

12. How satisfying was the resolution of the problem? A romantic ending -appropriate for this kind of film?

13. What points were being made about human nature, society.. environment, history and its shaping of people's lives, happiness and disappointment?