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I’m tempted to give a long, rambling preamble about the history and importance of Dorothy Arzner, pioneering queer director during the Hollywood’s studio era, and how her later reexamination by feminist and queer theorist salvaged her work from the dustbin of history. I’m refrain, but just know that Arzner’s proto-feminist leanings and lesbianism are two important foundational blocks to understanding and vibrating with her art. I find it easy to immediately tune into her films, but others may find them slightly mystifying as they engage with the female psyche and gaze and often position men as secondary objects.
It is here that we enter into Christopher Strong, a film named for Colin Clive’s English lord but is really told through the gaze of Katharine Hepburn’s aviatrix. There’s a dual story going on here: Clive’ Sir Christopher Strong is engaging in an affair with Hepburn’s daredevil, and his daughter is learning all about love’s battlefield while carrying on her own affair with a married man. If you think there’s no way this can end in anything but tragedy, then you’re absolutely correct.
Society will happily allow men a wider berth than it will ever give to women, and Hepburn’s character learns that lesson repeatedly. While Helen Chandler’s affair is allowed, not without some tut-tutting by smoothed over once a divorce happens, Clive and Hepburn’s treated as a personal afront and betrayal by everyone involved. But wasn’t Chandler hurting an innocent woman at the same time so isn’t her protestations against Hepburn somewhat hollow? I suppose it all feels different when it comes close to home.
Christopher Strong is a strange film as the “meet cute” between Clive and Hepburn is at the expanse of their presence. A party for the idle rich requires a scavenger hunt to find a woman over 21 that’s never had a love affair and a man married for five-years who has never cheated. They laugh over their mutual exploitation and humiliation and entangle their lives from there. Billie Burke’s Lady Strong can see where this is going from the start, but Hepburn’s androgynous character is a fascinating persona to Chandler, and Clive seems so innocent with her at first.
This was only Hepburn’s second film and she’s already in full bloom of her peculiarities – her tomboyish physicality, her angular masculinity, her general sense of queerness, both in her behavior and in her sexuality. It’s a stunning early performance from the neophyte film actress as she must first emerge as a daring adventuress before slowly peeling back to reveal the wounded heart underneath it all. She’s fetching in her aviator outfits and looks lovely in a moth costume for a ball scene, even if that outfit too heavily underscores her eventual fate.
Christopher Strong is a fascinating steppingstone in Hepburn’s career where she plays the “other woman” for the only time and begins her independent modern woman persona at the same time. Arzner gives her plenty of leeway to demonstrate her innate qualities and talents while populating the film with several capable supporting players. Their work together is a lovely melodrama that feels more modern than several of its contemporaries, and distinctly feminine in its outlook.
