Sylvia Scarlett R2 DVD Cary Grant, Katharine Hepburn

R2 originaali, ei suomitekstejä. Tekstit englanniksi. 

To escape from France with her father, Sylvia Scarlett (Katharine Hepburn) cuts her hair and disguises herself as a boy. When they meet shady operator Monkley (Cary Grant), he suggests that they team up and work as confidence tricksters. Before long, however, they have run out of cash, so Monkley calls on an old friend, Maudie, who works as a maid in a wealthy London household.

• Director ? : ? George Cukor
• Media Format ? : ? PAL
• Run time ? : ? 1 hour and 35 minutes
• Release date ? : ? 4 Jun. 2007
• Actors ? : ? Cary Grant, Katharine Hepburn, Brian Aherne, Edmund Gwenn, Natalie Paley
• Studio ? : ? Universal Pictures UK
• Producers ? : ? Pandro S. Berman
• ASIN ? : ? B000KJT7QE
• Writers ? : ? Gladys Unger, John Collier, Mortimer Offner
• Number of discs ? : ? 1

A film must be truly bad when its stars and director offer to make another movie for free if the studio buries it. You can certainly understand why when the hammy acting, the truly awful cockney music hall accents and the somewhat incoherent plot give the film a touch of the turkey about it. But it holds together in a curious way, being somewhat entertaining. Obviously, with such stars as Grant-Hepburn in the leads things can't be too bad, and they bluntly attack their lines with such chutzpah that you can't help feel some affection for how they try to shake up the stale script, even if the somewhat bizarre accents make you wonder if they have ever made it as far east as London (and of course it is a mystery why the French-raised Sylvia speaks in such a thick East London accent)!
I picked this one up filling in the gaps I had missed from Danny Peary's "Cult Movies" and he points out two ideas which make this film interesting. Firstly, the film is a constant stream of acts, pretences and make believes - Sylvia pretends to be a boy, Munkly pretends to be an honest man reporting Sylvia's father to customs to smuggle his own booty in, Sylvia acts as a penniless French boy to scam racegoers, they convine a maid that they are stage scouts with Sylvia's father dressing up as the lord of the house following which they buy a travelling theatre caravan - everything in the film is one big act after another! If you watch it again knowing that you can plug into the theatrical conventions that don't normally slip across into filmic conventions - things like the way the characters speak out loud to be heard at the back of the auditorium, the exaggerated gestures, the idea of a girl playing the male lead etc. The other thing he points out is how the film covertly presents issues of gender and sexuality that is unusual for that period - certainly not in a blatant or sexual way, probably not in an intentional one - as a boy Sylvia gets kissed by a girl, invited to bed with a man and has a man confess to being curiously attracted to him/her, not particularly something you expect in a 1930s film!
Its not a classic film and it is somewhat let down by its plot and script, particularly at times seeming to fall into a lull or lose its way a little, but it does entertain.

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