Career openings, no matter how promising they were at the time, can be disappointing in retrospect. A Bill of Divorcement was the great Katherine Hepburn's screen debut. It shows a feisty and clearly talented young actress, but her performance falls well short of the nigh on flawless standard with which most of us are familiar.
Hepburn shows a remarkable vitality and a natural touch that is so often absent from the early talkies, but she demonstrates only fleeting glimpses of all her abilities without allowing a mood or tone to dominate. We get to see her forcefulness, her credibility, her sense of humour, her emotional sincerity, but they are not bound together by control. She makes every scene an emotional climax, trying to give her all to every moment without ever once holding back. Her emotional peaks are marvellously done, but there are so many of them the overall effect is one of flatness.
The direction of George Cukor suffers from a similar problem. Cukor's career had an incredibly speedy ascent. Earlier in 1932 he was fired from the Ernst Lubitsch production One Hour with You simply for being not very good. By the end of 1933 he had garnered (and merited) his first Oscar nomination for Little Women. Sadly Bill of Divorcement belongs firmly with his novice efforts. As always, he shows himself to be a director who loves movement, be it camera manoeuvres or moving elements in the frame. He makes rapid switches from one type of movement to the other, and keeps the picture flowing, but there is no real sense to any of it, and too much of it is awkward and obtrusive. Some of the clumsiness could be down to having a second rate production crew (this was not among RKO's most prestigious productions) but still his choice of shots at any given moment is far from inspired.
But perhaps Bill of Divorcement was not the kind of material to inspire. The basic premise is a solid one, with scope for power and poignancy, but it is poorly executed. Hepburn's character has a particularly odd development. She begins as a flighty and somewhat callous teenager, saying her father might as well be dead for all she knows of him. Then when her father appears on the scene she immediately becomes his primary companion and defendant. There is no substantial build-up or prefiguring for her change of heart, meaning it lacks sincerity and therefore emotional impact.
Add to this mix the acting of John Barrymore, something which depending on the kind of picture could be either a blessing or a curse. Barrymore was like a locomotive – powerful, effective, unstoppable, but only capable of running along his own rails. Someone told him he would be playing an escapee from a lunatic asylum, so as could be predicted he hams it up into a crazed caricature. Yes, fair enough, he gets the emotionally fragile side to his character as well, but it is so exaggerated it's impossible to take seriously. On the other hand, the wonderfully professional and stylish Billie Burke delivers the one outstanding performance of the picture. She masks her character with stone-faced propriety, yet just perceptible beneath the surface is a sea of turmoil and conflict.
So Bill of Divorcement is not a product of outright incompetence. It is a work of good intentions still to be refined. Cukor would soon be specialising in making weighty stage-plays into classy cinematic entertainment without compromising their integrity. Once Hepburn gained a little more confidence she would quickly emerge as one of the most formidable performers in cinema history. Director and star would have a long and productive collaborative partnership. 1933 was to be the breakthrough year for them both. In 1932 they were still learning.
Hepburn shows a remarkable vitality and a natural touch that is so often absent from the early talkies, but she demonstrates only fleeting glimpses of all her abilities without allowing a mood or tone to dominate. We get to see her forcefulness, her credibility, her sense of humour, her emotional sincerity, but they are not bound together by control. She makes every scene an emotional climax, trying to give her all to every moment without ever once holding back. Her emotional peaks are marvellously done, but there are so many of them the overall effect is one of flatness.
The direction of George Cukor suffers from a similar problem. Cukor's career had an incredibly speedy ascent. Earlier in 1932 he was fired from the Ernst Lubitsch production One Hour with You simply for being not very good. By the end of 1933 he had garnered (and merited) his first Oscar nomination for Little Women. Sadly Bill of Divorcement belongs firmly with his novice efforts. As always, he shows himself to be a director who loves movement, be it camera manoeuvres or moving elements in the frame. He makes rapid switches from one type of movement to the other, and keeps the picture flowing, but there is no real sense to any of it, and too much of it is awkward and obtrusive. Some of the clumsiness could be down to having a second rate production crew (this was not among RKO's most prestigious productions) but still his choice of shots at any given moment is far from inspired.
But perhaps Bill of Divorcement was not the kind of material to inspire. The basic premise is a solid one, with scope for power and poignancy, but it is poorly executed. Hepburn's character has a particularly odd development. She begins as a flighty and somewhat callous teenager, saying her father might as well be dead for all she knows of him. Then when her father appears on the scene she immediately becomes his primary companion and defendant. There is no substantial build-up or prefiguring for her change of heart, meaning it lacks sincerity and therefore emotional impact.
Add to this mix the acting of John Barrymore, something which depending on the kind of picture could be either a blessing or a curse. Barrymore was like a locomotive – powerful, effective, unstoppable, but only capable of running along his own rails. Someone told him he would be playing an escapee from a lunatic asylum, so as could be predicted he hams it up into a crazed caricature. Yes, fair enough, he gets the emotionally fragile side to his character as well, but it is so exaggerated it's impossible to take seriously. On the other hand, the wonderfully professional and stylish Billie Burke delivers the one outstanding performance of the picture. She masks her character with stone-faced propriety, yet just perceptible beneath the surface is a sea of turmoil and conflict.
So Bill of Divorcement is not a product of outright incompetence. It is a work of good intentions still to be refined. Cukor would soon be specialising in making weighty stage-plays into classy cinematic entertainment without compromising their integrity. Once Hepburn gained a little more confidence she would quickly emerge as one of the most formidable performers in cinema history. Director and star would have a long and productive collaborative partnership. 1933 was to be the breakthrough year for them both. In 1932 they were still learning.