ChicDragon It's a mild crowd pleaser for people who are exhausted by blockbusters.

Neive Bellamy Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

Roy Hart If you're interested in the topic at hand, you should just watch it and judge yourself because the reviews have gone very biased by people that didn't even watch it and just hate (or love) the creator. I liked it, it was well written, narrated, and directed and it was about a topic that interests me.

Tyreece Hulme One of the best movies of the year! Incredible from the beginning to the end.

barrymn1 I think this RKO melodrama distills Hepburn's strengths in her early years even better than in her celebrated performance of Jo March in "Little Women". Kate was not the kind of actress who could play common or weak (although she was common but strong in the under-appreciated "Spitfire"). During this period, she mostly played strong and independent characters."A Woman Rebels" is a very good story about a Victorian woman who dares to be independent at a time when women were expected to get married. A career was considered out of the question. I think it's very well written and directed with good performances, especially from Herbert Marshall and Van Heflin (in his debut film performance).

jacobs-greenwood Directed by Mark Sandrich, with a screenplay co-written by Anthony Veiller, this above average, if dated, drama is about a young woman in (merry olde?) 19th century England who refuses to accept her position in the World imposed on her by her father. Some years later, Katharine Hepburn in the title role becomes an outspoken advocate for women's rights. The plot includes a romantic angle, or two or three, with a provocative secret which humanizes Hepburn's character and keeps it from being an offensive piece of feminist propaganda.However, audiences of the time stayed away, leading Ms. Hepburn to be famously labeled "box office poison" before she would prove her critics wrong by establishing herself as one of the greatest actresses in the history of the medium.The cast includes several familiar actors and actresses including Herbert Marshall, Donald Crisp, Lucile Watson, and Van Heflin.A young Pamela Thistlewaite (Hepburn) tells her younger sister Flora (Elizabeth Allen) not to cry when their cold and tyrannical widower father, Judge Thistlewaite (Crisp), lectures them. He insists that their homely, serious governess (Eily Malyon, uncredited) teach them that, as women, they should accept their role as subservient inferiors to men. Another live-in servant, Betty (Watson), isn't so sure and resists the Judge's "orders" in passive aggressive ways. The Judge decides it's time to introduce his daughters to society so that he can select appropriate husbands for them. Pamela tells Flora that she must marry for love and, fortunately for her, she falls for a Lieutenant Alan Freeland (David Manners) of whom her father approves.Meanwhile, Pamela is swept off her feet by Gerald Waring (Heflin). They have an affair after which Waring confesses that he's a married man, afraid to divorce his wife for the scandal which would cause his father, Lord Gaythorne, to cut off his means. So, Pamela runs away to Italy with Betty to visit newlyweds Flora and Alan, who's stationed there.On their way, Betty and Pamela embarrassingly meet Thomas Lane (Marshall), a diplomat who turns out to be a house guest of the Freelands. Pamela and Thomas spend some quality time together before he and Alan must return to duty in England and at sea, respectively. Pamela confesses to Flora her love for Waring as well as her growing physical "condition".When Flora later learns that Alan was killed at sea and conveniently falls down the stairs, ending her own pregnancy, she suggests a "solution" to Pamela's predicament before she dies: Pamela can pretend that her baby is Flora's, that she's raising it for her departed sister.Returning to England with Betty and the child, also named Flora, Pamela is pleasantly surprised by Thomas, who assists them with getting a goat (e.g. for fresh milk) aboard their boat. She then tells him that she plans on living alone and working, a foreign concept at the time. Actually, Betty lives with her, effectively raising young Flora through the years.Eventually, Pamela finds work writing for a women's magazine, which up to that point had never employed a woman! Her relationship with Thomas blossoms to the point that he proposes but, fearing a scandal which might ruin his career if anyone were to find out the truth about young Flora, she gently declines, though they remain friends through the years. The magazine she works for publishes articles about cooking and sewing until one day, when its editor (Lionel Pape, uncredited) is ill, inspired by a penniless woman in a similar predicament who kills herself, Pamela writes a scathing article about the puritanical society that "caused" it. Rushing in to stop the presses, the editor is surprised to learn that, instead of he being arrested, London's women are clamoring for more issues of the magazine. Hence, Pamela becomes the voice of the oppressed woman and is so successful that she eventually establishes her own magazine.Meanwhile, young Flora (Doris Dudley) has grown up. Irony of ironies is the fact that she falls for Gerald Waring Jr., meaning the truth of Flora's parentage is bound to come out.Perhaps the weakest part of the film is this final third act which includes a meeting between Gerald Sr. and Pamela for the first time in 20 years that leads to consequences she couldn't possibly foresee, even though its ending is decidedly upbeat if perhaps a bit too pat.

lugonian A WOMAN REBELS (RKO Radio, 1936), directed by Mark Sandrich, from the novel "Portrait of a Rebel" by Netta Syrett, offers Katharine Hepburn the type of role most suited for both her talents and personal interests, that of a feminist fighting for equal rights. Rather than a biography about early fighters of the feminist movements as Virginia Wolfe or Susan B. Anthony, A WOMAN REBELS takes a look at a fictional character named Pamela Thistlewaite.The story, set in "England, the middle of the Victorian era," introduces Pamela Thistlewaite (Katharine Hepburn), and her younger sister, Flora (Elizabeth Allen), living in Gideon Gray estate with her widowed father, Judge Thistlewaite (Donald Crisp) and humble Aunt Betty Bumble (Lucile Watson). Tutored by their governess, Piper (Eily Malyon), Pamela, with her thirst for knowledge, questions authority to why "women are inferior to men." Because of her outspokenness towards her disciplinarian father ("If you are unjust as a father, you must be equally unjust as a judge"), Thistlewaite decides to have his daughters introduced to society where they are to meet young men as prospect husbands. During a gathering, Flora meets and falls in love with sailor, Captain Alan Craig Freeland (David Manners), whom she marries and settles to Italy. As for Pamela, she encounters Gerald Waring Gaythorne (Van Heflin) with whom she becomes interested. Meeting secretly in England at Madame Tussand and Sons Exhibition Wax Works, they eventually have an affair before Pamela learns too late that Gerald is married. Keeping her pregnancy a secret, Pamela, accompanied by Aunt Betty, takes time away visiting with Flora, also expecting a child. While at her residence, Pamela meets Alan's guest for the weekend, Thomas Lane (Herbert Marshall), with whom Pamela becomes good friends. When Flora later learns Alan has been killed in an explosion at sea, the shock causes her to lose both her child and life. Raising her daughter as Flora's child, Pamela returns to England where she breaks all barriers by seeking employment. She finally lands one at Ladies Weekly Companion where she submits articles to William C. White (Lionel Pape), her publisher. After meeting with a young woman (Molly Lamont) struggling through life with a baby and no husband, Pamela, who sees herself in this girl, takes a stand by writing articles on woman's suffrage titled "Shame of Civilization" to instant success. While Lane wants Pamela as his wife, she turns him down so not to have her past ruin his political career. Years later, as her "niece" grows to womanhood, young Flora (Doris Dudley) meets and falls in love with a young man part of Pamela's hidden past, later leading to a scandalous trial.Considering the many novels and motion pictures bearing the theme of women birthing children out of wedlock and raising it as a child of another, A WOMAN REBELS offers nothing new in that regard, yet it's a wonder why it didn't prove successful at the box office. Weak scripting/ unsatisfactory conclusion, perhaps. Dreary underscoring, maybe. Time period? Not quite. Three years later, Bette Davis starred in THE OLD MAID (Warner Brothers, 1939) bearing a similar theme in same basic era, this time on American soil during and after the Civil War, resulting to something much better and highly effective. Hepburn, most noted for costume dramas as LITTLE WOMEN (1933) and THE LITTLE MINISTER (1934), was facing a career slump by this time, following previous failures as SYLVIA SCARLET (1935) and MARY OF Scotland (1936) to her name. While Hepburn's first mother role might or should have shown great promise, it only added insult to injury to being her third flop in a row.Of the Hepburn flops, A WOMAN REBELS, one of her lesser known and discussed projects from the 1930s, is actually better to some extent, with honorable mention to Donald Crisp's forceful performance of a cold-hearted, stern father treating his children with indifference because they're females. David Manners, Hepburn's love interest in her screen debut of A BILL OF DIVORCMENT (1932), has little to do in his final movie role. For Van Heflin and Doris Dudley (who sometimes resembles Joan Fontaine), both in film debut performances, only Heflin, given the film's most memorable line, "Hatred can hold two people together more stronger than love," went on to become as a accomplished actor with Academy Award best supporting win to his name in the 1940s. According to Bob Dorian, former host of American Movie Classics, where A WOMAN REBELS aired regularly prior to 2000, Hepburn wore 22 different Walter Plunkett designed costumes covering the Victorian England era (1860s to 1890). Costumes may have been the fashion for Hepburn, but its authentic historical Victorian-era setting gives this another plus. While Hepburn was allowed to age through the process, the make-up department avoided the common overplay of white hair and extended wrinkles over a more natural approach. Herbert Marshall, who comes late into the story, makes a satisfactory suitor who claims, "These modern women are so weak." Elizabeth Allan's meek sister role, though small, equally balances that of Hepburn's forceful manner.Once available on video cassette through Blackhawk Video in the 1980s and currently on DVD through the TCM Archive Collection, A WOMAN REBELS can be found whenever shown on Turner Classic Movies. (**1/2)

celebes This is a classic "chick flick". A real old-fashioned tear jerker.Quite good Hepburn, actually. A perfect part for her- it encompasses all the complex and varied facets of her screen persona. Its surprising this movie didn't do better at the box office. Too political or controversial for 1930's audiences? Herbert Marshall as the love interest is excellent as well.Although the film deals with a variety of women's issues- discrimination in the workplace for one, the real subject is the shame of having a child out of wedlock. It is hard for modern audiences to appreciate how much stigma was attached to this as recently as 40 years ago. Three lives are profoundly affected by the need to keep this secret.One negative: the actress who played Hepburn's daughter was a disappointment. Too old and lacking the grace and beauty of Hepburn herself. Just goes to show how rare true star quality is.