Suffers from being overlong and having a few dull stretches but besides those issues it unsurprisingly managed to charm me as most of these old period pieces have done. John Ford’s direction is expectedly fantastic with his token mastery of lighting making it a visual delight, you have Katharine Hepburn doing her thing in the titular role and the script tying it all together, it’s far from the best old Hollywood period drama I’ve seen but it still gave me the feeling I seek out when I put one of these on. I’ll start by saying I know a good bit of this story is exaggerated or simply fabricated but I’m well past caring about that, at this point I just take these in as alternate histories and when you do that it can make these watches a better time. Like I said earlier Hepburn is great in the lead, I really need to see more of her with every performance I have seen being fantastic, I can count the number of roles I’ve seen of hers on one hand and I already see why she’s considered one of the greatest. I really enjoyed Florence Eldridge’s Queen Elizabeth I too, she nailed the vibe from what I know about that queen and each of her scenes was very entertaining to watch. Dudley Nichols’ adaptation of Maxwell Anderson’s play is another big reason why and how this managed to work, not even a ‘bad’ movie from this era can give me a less than mediocre script, I’m starting to be convinced it’ll never happen. It’s obviously a bit of a letdown in comparison to my other watches of Ford’s and even though it does struggle at points it still has the magic I love about old historical dramas, I would do anything for this genre to make a comeback.

Suffers from being overlong and having a few dull stretches but besides those issues it unsurprisingly managed to charm me as most of these old period pieces have done. John Ford’s direction is expectedly fantastic with his token mastery of lighting making it a visual delight, you have Katharine Hepburn doing her thing in the titular role and the script tying it all together, it’s far from the best old Hollywood period drama I’ve seen but it still gave me the feeling I seek out when I put one of these on. I’ll start by saying I know a good bit of this story is exaggerated or simply fabricated but I’m well past caring about that, at this point I just take these in as alternate histories and when you do that it can make these watches a better time. Like I said earlier Hepburn is great in the lead, I really need to see more of her with every performance I have seen being fantastic, I can count the number of roles I’ve seen of hers on one hand and I already see why she’s considered one of the greatest. I really enjoyed Florence Eldridge’s Queen Elizabeth I too, she nailed the vibe from what I know about that queen and each of her scenes was very entertaining to watch. Dudley Nichols’ adaptation of Maxwell Anderson’s play is another big reason why and how this managed to work, not even a ‘bad’ movie from this era can give me a less than mediocre script, I’m starting to be convinced it’ll never happen. It’s obviously a bit of a letdown in comparison to my other watches of Ford’s and even though it does struggle at points it still has the magic I love about old historical dramas, I would do anything for this genre to make a comeback.

i can’t believe i’m saying this about a Katharine Hepburn movie but i couldn’t wait for this to be over

i can’t believe i’m saying this about a Katharine Hepburn movie but i couldn’t wait for this to be over