NOTES: A critical and financial dud, the picture ended up $248,000 in the red after its worldwide release.
COMMENT: After an extremely slow and tedious beginning (with Eric Blore hogging the camera and mugging to no end) and a lot of tiresome chit-chat, this film picks up from the transformation scene when Hepburn decides to impersonate her flighty (and fictitious) niece. She looks quite fetching in her Walter Plunkett costumes and her personality is so entrancing as to make the deception almost credible.
It is Franchot Tone who lets the side down, as his expression and tone seems to convey that he is not taken in; when in reality, it is just old Franchot acting stiffly as usual and trotting out his usual mannerisms - the eyebrow raising and the tone of raillery in his voice - to no particular purpose. Hepburn tends to shade the other members of the cast and their characters are so sketchily developed that after a while they grow tiresome. Of course, this is a fault carried over from the Barrie play. It might be truly said that the picture is very much a filmed stage play - despite Stevens' endeavors to disguise the fact by inter-cutting from a wide variety of camera angles.
The film's most successful scenes are the brief interludes - such as the croquet match and other brief glimpses of Livvy's flirtations that have no counterpart in the original. Most of the film's dialogue is taken over intact from the play. Production values are excellent.
COMMENT: After an extremely slow and tedious beginning (with Eric Blore hogging the camera and mugging to no end) and a lot of tiresome chit-chat, this film picks up from the transformation scene when Hepburn decides to impersonate her flighty (and fictitious) niece. She looks quite fetching in her Walter Plunkett costumes and her personality is so entrancing as to make the deception almost credible.
It is Franchot Tone who lets the side down, as his expression and tone seems to convey that he is not taken in; when in reality, it is just old Franchot acting stiffly as usual and trotting out his usual mannerisms - the eyebrow raising and the tone of raillery in his voice - to no particular purpose. Hepburn tends to shade the other members of the cast and their characters are so sketchily developed that after a while they grow tiresome. Of course, this is a fault carried over from the Barrie play. It might be truly said that the picture is very much a filmed stage play - despite Stevens' endeavors to disguise the fact by inter-cutting from a wide variety of camera angles.
The film's most successful scenes are the brief interludes - such as the croquet match and other brief glimpses of Livvy's flirtations that have no counterpart in the original. Most of the film's dialogue is taken over intact from the play. Production values are excellent.