Sylvia Scarlett (1935)
** (out of 4)
After her father (Edmund Gwenn) gets into some trouble, Sylvia Scarlett (Katharine Hepburn) decides to sneak him out of France. She decides to dress up as a boy named Sylvester and before long they meet Jimmy (Cary Grant) and the three "men" are out getting whatever money they can. When Sylvester meets Michael (Brian Aherne) "he" finally has the desire to come out as the woman she really is.
SYLVIA SCARLETT is a really, really strange movie and it's even stranger when you consider the era that it came out. Apparently reviews were mostly negative when the film was released but it seems over the years more people have discovered the film and it has become somewhat of a cult movie. With that said, I personally found it to be rather boring, unfunny and I honestly didn't find too much here to enjoy.
The biggest problem I had with the film is that it didn't make me laugh and I thought the story was rather stupid to say the least. I mean, once the daughter and father are out of France there's really no need for her to pretend to be a man. I'm not sure what the point of her remaining a man was but it just doesn't add anything to the picture. I'd argue that the lack of laughs are a major problem but another is the fact that Sylvia and Michael characters have no chemistry at all.
Speaking of Hepburn, she's game in the film but I honestly wouldn't say this was a "good" performance. Both Gwenn and Aherne are decent in their supporting parts but it's Grant who easily steals the picture with his charming and good-natured performance. The film's most memorable scene is when a woman, thinking Hepburn is a man, comes onto him and the two kiss, which has to be one of the earliest examples of this in a Hollywood picture.