Quality Street (1937)

This Movie Can Only Be Described With One Word.

People are voting emotionally.

Most undeservingly overhyped movie of all time??

I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.

George Stevens made 2 bombs in his career-"The Greatest Story Ever Told," and this 1937 misery.We all age in 10 years. What's so new about that? Franchot Tone returns from the Napoleonic Wars and can't adjust to Phoebe, (Hepburn) so she pretends to be a younger, more glamorous Libby. The entire picture then becomes one of Hepburn trying to hide the fact that Libby and Phoebe are really the same person. Estelle Woodward, who is actually young in 1937, is suspicious but utter than her facial grimaces, she really has nothing much to do here. Ditto for Fay Bainer as the sister, who seems to be befuddled by this whole mess.The usually hysterical Eric Blore is greatly subdued by a silly script.

For her second time in a James M. Barrie role, Katharine Hepburn starred in a remake of Quality Street. Hepburn had previously played a little Scot's minx in The Little Minister also for RKO. Barrie did right by her again, she was well cast as one of the Throssel sisters of Great Britain of the Napoleonic Era. She and sister Fay Bainter look like they're doomed to be spinsters. Bainter has resigned herself to that fate, but Hepburn still has hopes.But when she thinks Franchot Tone might be popping the question, he's only around to tell her he's doing what Admiral Nelson expects of every man, his duty to England. In 1805 he enlists in the army and Hepburn and Bainter go on teaching school.Ten years go by and when Tone doesn't at first recognize Hepburn when he returns, she thinks her prime has passed. But she'll teach Tone a lesson by impersonating her own made up niece. And what a niece, a naughty flirt who entrances all the young blades returned from the wars and doing a job on Tone's ego as well.Quality Street has a quality history, it was first performed on Broadway by the immortal Maude Adams in 1901 and then made a silent film in 1927 starring Marion Davies and Conrad Nagel. I can certainly see why William Randolph Hearst thought this a good role for Davies. She could be both a crinolined heroine and also use her comic talents as well. Hepburn also gets to use her full talents playing one role straight and imitating a fictitious person at the same time.Quality Street got an Oscar nomination for Best Musical Score. If it sounds familiar the theme was recycled later on for the frontier film Rachel And The Stranger. It was even given words that were sung on record by that film's star Robert Mitchum. And George Stevens after doing Alice Adams with Hepburn was assigned this one as well. He'd do even better the third and last time he worked with Hepburn in Woman Of The Year.Quality Street is a good film, but I'm sure that Depression Era audiences found a Victorian Era comedy a bit dated.

This is a gem!--IF you like stories set in this time period to begin with. IF you like the more sentimental acting style prevalent in the 1930's. And probably IF you're female.This has some resonance with Jane Austen's Persuasion. For me, it felt as if I'd found a new Georgette Heyer story, and on film! This is set in the Regency period in England. It is both romantic and comedic. Katherine Hepburn gives another great performance, similar to her Jo March in Little Women. I don't find her acting over the top at all. Franchot Tone is a good foil for her--not a great actor, but pretty hunky. Additionally, it has a lovely cast full of the kind of character actors you see in films like the Greer Garson Pride and Prejudice. In this case, it's Fay Bainter, Estelle Winwood, and other notables giving the film a fey charm.

Someone said they liked this more than the overrated Philadelphia Story, now that might be a tiny bit over the top but I do adore this movie. I first saw it as child. The print was grainy and I could not get over the fact that one of the Miss Willoughby's looked like Marty Feldman in a dress. But it was pretty, pretty language, pretty clothes, pretty harmless people. As I learned more about the Napoleonic wars (and WWII that was just beginning a full boil as this movie was made) I gained a respect for the need for a palate cleanser such as this. It's acted in high style, a lite version of a French farce or Shakespeare at his most lighthearted.Regardless of the fluff there are sinews in this piece that make the fluff more satisfying. Dr. Brown leaves his love, not a potential starving widow but a pretty thing more likely to marry if he's killed. The Throssels, rather than starve, take students and do fairly well although the smell of old maid schoolteacher is beginning to tire them. Dr. Brown is gently teased that he has aged himself as he has to compete for "Livvy's" attentions and he is lightly chastised for his inability to realize that 10 years must age his sweetheart. The herd of widows and old maids are not the cruel destructive soured bitter things they might have been but rather just a little catty and too nosy. They are the gatekeepers of morality in fantasy land. The way Dr. Brown rips down the school sign and gentle accepts responsibility for Susan displays a knowledge of the peril in which unmarried poor women stood in the early part of the 19th Century. And finally, love makes even an old maid lovely.This is a perfect movie when you're feeling bruised by life and the extremes of overly produced films.