Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

The film was still a fun one that will make you laugh and have you leaving the theater feeling like you just stole something valuable and got away with it.

The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

My observations about this movie:This isn't pre-code. It's later-code. The code began 1930, and movie-making didn't pay much attention to its strictures until around 1934-1935 when the Hayes Code church ladies really tightened the screws. This is according to my recent film studies and theatrical critiquing coursework at university. Near-nudity Hollywood cinema was more prevalent before the early 1930s, yes, but in this movie (1933) there is a middle ground approach between total depravity and future movies where nonmarital pregnancies were pretended to not exist.Billie Burke was a Broadway stage star in the 19-teens, for impresario Charles Frohman. Later, she married Florenz Ziegfeld against Frohman's warnings (Frohman died 1915 in Lusitania disaster). Burke "retired" from show business. Ziegfeld lived high on the hog, and after many costly and fabulous theatrical productions was wiped out financially in the 1929 stock market crash. He died in 1932, a ruined man. Burke had tons of his debts to pay, so she went into movie acting. Her role in "Christopher Strong" (released 1933; maybe production began 1932) was dull, witless, dependent and boring -- at least it got a head start on paying Flo's bills. Burke's later roles included being airy and light in musicals, i.e. Glinda, the Good Witch of the North in "Wizard of Oz"/Judy Garland, and Mrs. Livingston Belney in 1949's "Barkleys of Broadway"/Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers. Burke was the daughter of an English circus clown named Billy Burke. Billie's real name was Mary William Ethelbert Appleton Burke.Colin Clive was Dr. Frankenstein in two Frankenstein movies. One would not think of him as a romantic person, but in Christopher Strong he overcomes his wooden shell and actually falls for bold and daring Katharine Hepburn's virginal career-oriented athletic persona. One look from him at her famous slinky form-fitting moth costume was just enough to make him fall head over heels away from his boring, clingy Billie Burke spouse.Hepburn's Lady Cynthia Darrington was broke. She must also have lost tons of money in the stock market crash and ensuing worldwide Great Depression. She lives in a crappy looking apartment, but has household help and is known as Your Ladyship. Indeed, she did not look like a "lady". She was very mannish, except for wearing that moth dress. The director was mannish, and I think Cynthia's riding outfits looked a lot like pictures I have seen of Dorothy Arzner. Cynthia did not have Arzner's mannish hairstyle. At any rate, think of Lady Darrington as a leftover from a Downton Abbey-type family who lost their riches during World War One. She must have pawned a lot of jewels to pay her maids' salaries, and slept with a lot of wealthy men (off-canvas, of course) to pay for those expensive airplanes and flying lessons. Hepburn wears a DRESS in this movie (moth costume), plus a gypsy SKIRT in her movie "The Little Minister (1934).I have also studied aviation, and have heard many times that Cynthia was designed as a study of the real life of Amelia Earhart who died 1937, four years after the release of this movie. Maybe Amelia was also pregnant by one of her many male financial contributors, and decided to "disappear". The ending of Christopher Strong perhaps "strongly" predicted the future. Amelia also looked masculine at times, but just like Cynthia she really liked men and enjoyed their comforts much more than the public was led to believe. Also in real life, both Earhart and Katharine Hepburn knew Howard Hughes. Hughes contributed majorly to Hepburn's movie career expenses. Howard, also a famous aviator and inventor, may also have paid a lot of Amelia's expenses. 10/10.

This was Katherine Hepburn's second film, and she gives a very strong performance indeed (pun intended). She plays a young woman aviator, clearly based upon Amelia Earhart, who has never loved a man and, although beautiful, is convinced that 'there is nothing about me that a man could love'. How wrong she is, as the character Sir Christopher Strong, played sturdily if stodgily by Colin Clive with an upper lip so stiff it cracks, proceeds to demonstrate by cheating on his wife, the wimpish and idle Billie Burke, who likes to lie in bed in a lace bed jacket or welcome guests to soirees in a warbling affected voice. This is such a period piece that anyone who wants a genuine glimpse of pre-War London 'society' should make a point of watching it. How artificial can manners get? Talk about a veneer of politesse thinly covering a seething mass of prejudice, arrogance, and superciliousness! The film was sensitively directed by Dorothy Arzner (1897-1979), the only important female director in Hollywood between 1927 and 1943, who made 21 films in those years, of which the best known today is probably CRAIG'S WIFE (1936) with Rosalind Russell. Although one can imagine being attracted to Hepburn, it is difficult today to imagine anyone taking a character like Christopher Strong seriously, as he is so incredibly boring and formal that any modern woman faced with having to spend a day with him would probably become suicidal very quickly. But in the 1930s, people like that were simply everywhere. Some of the 'fun parties' shown in this film are truly extraordinary. If you can sit back and pretend that you are alive in 1933 and all the 'strange stuff' is normal, then you will get a lot out of this film. It is based on a novel by the popular author of the day, Gilbert Frankau. You would never know that on the other side of the Atlantic, the Great Depression was underway, since the frivolity and frolicsome behaviour of these London socialites gives an effervescent air of limitless wealth and privilege. And it is perfectly natural that Katherine Hepburn has her own private plane in which she can fly around the world solo if she feels like it, and does. Like I said, this is a period piece, and because Hepburn throws her all into it, the drama is powerful within its period limitations.

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.