I'm always at a loss at how many stars a movie like this merits. Not that the number of stars matters that much. It's a crude metric. The thing is, I found it almost painful to watch, yet I can understand why others might find it more appealing.
Hepburn plays Trigger, a backwoods young woman who scolds passers by and throws rocks at them if they try to use the path past her house. Yes, she's a queer duck. The other hillbilly folks think she's a bit touched and, in any case, an irritant to the community. Actually, she's an independent spirit whose impulses towards autonomy just take weird forms.
She prays a lot, for example, and always seems to have a quote from the Bible at hand. She prays over a sick old lady who regains her health. And she walks off with a sick infant and prays over the baby, who later dies.
Her ramshackle cabin is invaded by a kind of lynch mob. The word "witch" isn't mentioned but when Hepburn appears in an unexpected place, one of the men mutters, "You kin see what she is." There's a romance thrown in too. Hepburn has no learnin' to speak of and some men enter the picture in order to build a dam. One of them is the handsome Robert Young who gives Hepburn her first kiss. She falls in love, then discovers that he's happily married. Then there is the avuncular chief engineer, Ralph Bellamy, who sees past her quirkiness and perceives her inner spirit.
It's one tragedy after another, with a few interpolated triumphs, including a climactic dash of self understanding. It's what at the time was called a woman's picture through and through. I don't mean any disrespect by that. I don't find men's pictures like "Rambo" or "The Punisher" any more engaging than this unremarkable fluff.
It's based on a play and it looks stagy. And the director, John Cromwell, has brought nothing to the party. It's all overacted and obvious. At one point Cromwell gives us a choker close up of Hepburn's face -- the only one in the film -- to make certain we can see the tear rolling down her cheek. Contrast this, just for an example, with Jane Darwell's leaving the Joad farm in "Grapes of Wrath." Darwell looks wistfully into a dusty old mirror and holds up an ear ring that she is about to leave behind. Hepburn's sentimentality is obvious; Darwell's is subdued and merely melancholy. There isn't a single touch of poetry in this tale.
Another problem is with Katherine Hepburn's performance. She's badly miscast, and hadn't yet developed any acting chops. (Man, was she to develop them later!) Her upland South accent is clearly superimposed on a set of phones acquired in Hartford and Bryn Mawr. She's not even as physically attractive as she would be ten or fifteen years later.
I haven't seen "Bill of Divorcement," in which she is supposed to be very good, but during the 30s she seems to have made a series of films that could have been managed just as well by an actress of more modest talents -- Joan Crawford or someone.
Well, as I say, others might like it more. Good luck.
Hepburn plays Trigger, a backwoods young woman who scolds passers by and throws rocks at them if they try to use the path past her house. Yes, she's a queer duck. The other hillbilly folks think she's a bit touched and, in any case, an irritant to the community. Actually, she's an independent spirit whose impulses towards autonomy just take weird forms.
She prays a lot, for example, and always seems to have a quote from the Bible at hand. She prays over a sick old lady who regains her health. And she walks off with a sick infant and prays over the baby, who later dies.
Her ramshackle cabin is invaded by a kind of lynch mob. The word "witch" isn't mentioned but when Hepburn appears in an unexpected place, one of the men mutters, "You kin see what she is." There's a romance thrown in too. Hepburn has no learnin' to speak of and some men enter the picture in order to build a dam. One of them is the handsome Robert Young who gives Hepburn her first kiss. She falls in love, then discovers that he's happily married. Then there is the avuncular chief engineer, Ralph Bellamy, who sees past her quirkiness and perceives her inner spirit.
It's one tragedy after another, with a few interpolated triumphs, including a climactic dash of self understanding. It's what at the time was called a woman's picture through and through. I don't mean any disrespect by that. I don't find men's pictures like "Rambo" or "The Punisher" any more engaging than this unremarkable fluff.
It's based on a play and it looks stagy. And the director, John Cromwell, has brought nothing to the party. It's all overacted and obvious. At one point Cromwell gives us a choker close up of Hepburn's face -- the only one in the film -- to make certain we can see the tear rolling down her cheek. Contrast this, just for an example, with Jane Darwell's leaving the Joad farm in "Grapes of Wrath." Darwell looks wistfully into a dusty old mirror and holds up an ear ring that she is about to leave behind. Hepburn's sentimentality is obvious; Darwell's is subdued and merely melancholy. There isn't a single touch of poetry in this tale.
Another problem is with Katherine Hepburn's performance. She's badly miscast, and hadn't yet developed any acting chops. (Man, was she to develop them later!) Her upland South accent is clearly superimposed on a set of phones acquired in Hartford and Bryn Mawr. She's not even as physically attractive as she would be ten or fifteen years later.
I haven't seen "Bill of Divorcement," in which she is supposed to be very good, but during the 30s she seems to have made a series of films that could have been managed just as well by an actress of more modest talents -- Joan Crawford or someone.
Well, as I say, others might like it more. Good luck.