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To me, this movie is perfection.

Absolutely Fantastic

it is finally so absorbing because it plays like a lyrical road odyssey that’s also a detective story.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

This film is Katharine Hepburn's second film and her first in a starring role. In her first film, 1932's "A Bill of Divorcement", Billie Burke had starred with Hepburn fourth billed. Here the situation has reversed itself, and Hepburn supplants Burke in more ways than one. Hepburn plays Lady Cynthia Darrington, a member of the British gentry whose family has lost its money. As a result, she pursues aviation for both her love of it and for money to try and restore the family fortune. She has forsaken love up to this point in her life, and as the result of a human scavenger hunt at a party attended by one of her friends, she winds up at the party because she is a virgin, and Christopher Strong (Colin Clive) winds up there because he is a faithful husband to Billie Burke's character. The two meet, fall in love, and eventually this leads to the loss of what distinguished both of them in the first place.There are several things that make this film interesting - not the least of which being that Hepburn's role turns out to be semi-autobiographical. In actuality Hepburn was an athletic and independent woman of aristocratic roots who fell for a married Spencer Tracy who also never technically divorced his wife. Then there's that metallic moth suit complete with antennae that Cynthia wears to a party - yikes! And the middle-aged Lord Strong doesn't even do a double take when she walks in wearing this outfit. So much for the stuffy image of the British aristocracy. The ending is odd since it doesn't seem consistent with Cynthia's strong independent streak. Her solution to her dilemma when she realizes that, although Strong loves her, he would only actually leave his wife out of a sense of duty to Cynthia, seems completely out of character. Also, Billie Burke does such a good job of playing the wronged wife who suffers in silence and dignity that it is really hard to sympathize with anyone but her. Finally, the title is a bit of a mystery. The title character, Christopher Strong, is really secondary to Hepburn's Cynthia Darrington, and I can't help but wonder why the film wasn't titled after Hepburn's character instead.Director Dorothy Arzner, the only female director in Hollywood during this time, certainly took some chances with this one. Some of the film worked and some of it didn't, but I don't think it would have had a chance without Hepburn in the lead. I recommend this film to anyone interested in the evolution of Hepburn's acting style.

This was the second Katharine Hepburn movie I ever saw, and I have to say that it impressed me enough to keep watching her in other films (to end up eventually loving her!).The is the kind of movie that needs to be watched a few times before a viewer can fully understand and recognize all the plots, ironies, patterns, reflections, etc. The movie starts out with Cynthia as the woman who has never had a love affair, and Christopher as the man who's always been faithful to his wife. Meanwhile, Monica (Christopher's daughter) is having a love affair, and Bill is being unfaithful to his wife with Monica. Monica and Bill are the ones who bring Cynthia and Christopher together. When Cynthia and Christopher meet, it still seems unlikely that the whole situation will change. Cynthia imposes herself more and more onto the Strong family, until one can begin to get the sense that something is going on between Cynthia and Chris.The family and Cynthia go to France, where the tables really turn. At a party, Monica has a one-night-stand with some random fellow (after being told she is not allowed to see Bill until he is divorced). At the very same party, Chris ditches his wife for Cynthia. The whole night ends with a very sappy boat-ride between Chris and Cynthia and with Monica going off with the man she met at the party. At this point, Cynthia is having a love affair with Chris, and Chris is being unfaithful to his wife. Monica has no boyfriend (just her one-night-stand) and Bill is being faithful to his wife.When they return home, Bill and Monica end up having a fight about Monica being frivolous in France. Monica rushes to Cynthia and confides that she is going to commit suicide. Cynthia explains that suicide is not the way to go (which Cynthia herself ends up resorting to at the end of the movie) and encourages Monica to make up with Bill. It works, and Bill and Monica end up getting married. Eventually they find out that they are expecting a baby. . .and Cynthia finds out that she is expecting a baby as well. Christopher's baby, of course. Cynthia tries to tell Chris about the baby, but she keeps getting interrupted through his distraction with Monica's pregnancy.One day, Chris and Cynthia go out to lunch at a place where they think that they will not be seen. Of course, Bill and Monica end up eating at the very same place, and Monica sees her father and Cynthia together. Monica and Cynthia have a fight where Monica says that Cynthia will never know anything about life, that Cynthia knows nothing about love and one day she will crash down in her plane and die, not knowing what life was about at all (which is the half-true prediction of Cynthia's fate).Not long after, Cynthia goes up in her plane to break the altitude record. Someone tells her to put on her oxygen mask once she gets to a certain height, which is basically our big hint. She puts on her oxygen mask at the level at which she was told and begins to cry from behind the mask as she keep flying toward the goal height. She sees a montage of all her recent experiences with flying, with Chris, with life. Finally, she rips off the oxygen mask and plummets to her death, having broken the altitude record. She never tells Chris about her pregnancy.This movie has such a sophisticated, complicated plot. You see the correlation of Monica and Bill's relationship with Chris and Cynthia's. Eventually the relationship situations become reversed, while remaining similar at the same time. The reflections of the relationships are like the symmetry of a butterfly's wings. . .or of a moth's (ha-ha). It's not really even the aviation that is important (although Cynthia does fly around the world at one point in the movie).Sorry if I have some of the scenes out of order, it's been a long time since I've seen the movie. I just wanted to emphasize the irony of the plot. This movie is one of my all-time favorites, and although some filming and acting techniques are out of date, the overall story could stand the test of time. If you didn't like it the first time, watch it a few more times. I think you could appreciate it more that way.

This was one collaboration that drew attention. Lesbian film director Dorothy Arzner and film actress Katharine Hepburn. For God sakes, both women wore pants in town when it was seen as scandalous. Anyway, the legendary Kate plays a female aviator much like Amelia Earhart who falls in love with a married man known as Christopher Strong or Sir since he is titled. I loved the old black and white films especially since I think they provide so much more than today's films. Anyway, Kate's character and Strong have an affair. I love the scene where she wears that silly costume. Kate's role as the other woman could have been scandalous back then if it wasn't so obvious to the Strong family. Billie Burke better known as Glinda, the good witch in the Wizard of Oz, plays Lady Strong. I loved Katharine Hepburn and I think a lot of people did whether they were colleagues, friends, relatives, or whatever. I think she would become the other woman in the Spencer Tracy relationship in reality. Oh well, the film is worth watching if just for that costume.

Katharine Hepburn is a beautiful and accomplished aviatrix in "Christopher Strong," a 1933 film also starring Clive Owen and Billie Burke, and directed by Dorothy Arzner. Hepburn's role of Lady Cynthia is loosely based on Amelia Earhart, a young, ambitious career woman who is not interested in marriage and home but rather accomplishment. She's an early feminist, and the role is perfect for Hepburn, who with her androgynous looks and strong performances would go on to play many such roles in her very long career."Christopher Strong" is of interest because it's early Hepburn, has a feminist theme in the early '30s, and also because it's pre-Code. Arzner does a great job depicting the love affair of Hepburn and Owen and yet shows nothing, with a hand reaching up and checking the time on a small clock...then the light is turned off and plunges the room into darkness after the lovers exchange a few words.The problem with the movie is that it's badly dated, a '30s melodrama with tremulous, "we must be honorable," pip-pip and all that rot dialogue. Owen tells everyone at a party that he will never be unfaithful to his wife, that it is a moral charge he holds high - and seconds later he meets Hepburn and you can tell he's already falling. Owen is an odd choice of a romantic partner - he's not exactly the man one would give up everything for.A bigger problem is the performance of Billie Burke, a fine actress. She is extremely sympathetic as the suffering wife - so sympathetic, in fact, and Hepburn seems so callous about the whole thing for most of the film, that one sides with what I'm sure is the wrong person. Also, putting up with your husband's infidelity and not saying anything brings us right back into aggressive non-feminism.I am forced to agree with one of the other comments - yes, it is directed by an important director, yes, it stars an important, legendary star, yes, it's early feminism, and yes, it's not that great a movie, rather, an artifact. Worth seeing? To catch Hepburn in that moth costume - absolutely.