Sylvia Scarlett Reviews

Think fast! Your dad, Edmund Gwenn has been embezzling money and you have to escape the country and you look like Katharine Hepburn. In order to evade the authorities, do you cut off your long braids and pose as a boy? Of course you do! When you and dad run across a smuggler who looks an awful lot like Cary Grant you decide to keep up the ruse so that you might learn the tricks of being a con man. Unfortunately, you wind up being too honest to do any decent thieving so you decide to start a touring performance troupe (you, your dad, Cary Grant and some other dame you found). When some loud mouth heckles the dame in your group while you're doing your act onstage, you go home with him, and spend the rest of the movie trying to decide whether you love him or Cary Grant. Everyone in this movie is confused and the plot is sloppy/messy, but I thought Hepburn was pretty cute in this gender-bending role (there's even a "lesbian" kiss). Granted, this was probably one of the first films of this kind, but that still doesn't make it very good.

This movie is somewhat strange, mostly because I didn't think Hepburn's character had a good enough reason to dress up as a boy. I didn't understand that part, and the movie doesn't explain it. Hepburn and Grant are really good in this movie, though, and it's really funny, so I stopped questioning it.

Think fast! Your dad, Edmund Gwenn has been embezzling money and you have to escape the country and you look like Katharine Hepburn. In order to evade the authorities, do you cut off your long braids and pose as a boy? Of course you do! When you and dad run across a smuggler who looks an awful lot like Cary Grant you decide to keep up the ruse so that you might learn the tricks of being a con man. Unfortunately, you wind up being too honest to do any decent thieving so you decide to start a touring performance troupe (you, your dad, Cary Grant and some other dame you found). When some loud mouth heckles the dame in your group while you're doing your act onstage, you go home with him, and spend the rest of the movie trying to decide whether you love him or Cary Grant. Everyone in this movie is confused and the plot is sloppy/messy, but I thought Hepburn was pretty cute in this gender-bending role (there's even a "lesbian" kiss). Granted, this was probably one of the first films of this kind, but that still doesn't make it very good.

See it if only for the fact that Hepburn plays a girl/man for most of the movie. It is very odd, but it pulls you in.

Katharine Hepburn posing as boy was very convincing..she always acted like one anyway. Cary Grant was without a doubt the most charming and best part of the movie.

Think fast! Your dad, Edmund Gwenn has been embezzling money and you have to escape the country and you look like Katharine Hepburn. In order to evade the authorities, do you cut off your long braids and pose as a boy? Of course you do! When you and dad run across a smuggler who looks an awful lot like Cary Grant you decide to keep up the ruse so that you might learn the tricks of being a con man. Unfortunately, you wind up being too honest to do any decent thieving so you decide to start a touring performance troupe (you, your dad, Cary Grant and some other dame you found). When some loud mouth heckles the dame in your group while you're doing your act onstage, you go home with him, and spend the rest of the movie trying to decide whether you love him or Cary Grant. Everyone in this movie is confused and the plot is sloppy/messy, but I thought Hepburn was pretty cute in this gender-bending role (there's even a "lesbian" kiss). Granted, this was probably one of the first films of this kind, but that still doesn't make it very good.

The film is a little unfocused. Grant is playing a character that is not charming, which is interesting. Hepburn, a woman partly responsible for women being allowed to wear pants, is pretty awesome and takes part in one of cinema's first lesbian kisses. Other than a for a few moments, the film is quite forgettable.

A movie ahead of its time. Maybe society wasn't ready for it back then, but had it been produced a few decades latter, maybe the success would have been other. Katherine Hepburn and Cary Grant are brilliant as always and the storyline was well developed.

Curiously uninvolving, especially considering the cast and presence of Katherine Hepburn and Cary grant, but it is still good. Very well photographed, and it has an interesting plot.

This film is proof that even bucketloads of acting talent can't buy you a winning movie! It stars Katharine Hepburn as the title character, Cary Grant as the "Cockney" jewel thief Jimmy Monkley and was directed by George Cukor.... and it STINKS! In a nutshell, Hepburn's dad (played by Edmund Gwenn) is a compulsive gambler. To pay the bills, Gwenn embezzles some money and flees France with his daughter and some expensive lace. In order to throw off the authorities, Sylvia is forced to pass herself off as a boy (for reasons unknown). This is one of my main beefs with the film... Sylvia could have just as easily changed her name to something else entirely instead of trying to be a boy. Although I'm no fan of Katharine Hepburn's beauty, she's entirely too pretty to pass for a boy.

So anyway, in the passage over, they meet Monkley (Grant). The first 30 seconds on the screen, Grant tries to affect a stereotypical Cockney accent; he then apparently forgets said accent and spend the rest of the film speaking in his normal voice. A bunch of stuff then happens, blah, blah, blah...

I dunno. I just didn't care for this film. I understand that it was controversial back in the day for its "gender bending" storyline. I just didn't buy it. [i]Some Like It Hot[/i] was a much better film for the "gender bending" genere, although it's more of a straight comedy as this film has moments of seriousness.

I didn't really enjoy this film because Cary Grant isn't really the typical "Cary Grant"...you know the suave debonair guy who sweeps girls off their feet... He is pretty much a jerk in this film...which I guess is good because it shows he can play more than one type of character. Sylvia Scarlett (Katharine Hepburn) is about a young girl who dresses as a boy to save herself and her father from financial ruin. In the process they meet up with a shrewd con-artist (Cary Grant) who tricks people into getting money. Grant is suspiscious of Sylvia's behavior. In the process of trying to make money Sylvia meets a man that she falls in love with but, he only really thinks of her as a child. Disheartened by her revealing that she really is a girl, and he laughs at her she decides to go back. Cary soon finds out as well as the rest of the people.
It's an okay film I guess...but I would've rather seen Grant as the man Katharine fell in love with...all well...Grant and Hepburn were still superb in their performances. But aren't they always!