If one can believe it, "Sylvia Scarlett" was director George Cukor's favorite film. His reasoning has to do more with the fun he, and the crew, were having, rather than what comes out in the movie. Watching again, after not seeing it for some time, the film appears not to have aged gracefully, in spite of the remastered DVD of the original 1935 RKO production.
The action takes place in more naive times, something that is hard to believe today's audiences would respond to the basic premise of the film. We are asked to believe that Sylvia comes to London impersonating a young man, following a good for nothing father. Jimmy Monkley, the man Henry Scarlett meets on board, turns out to be a rat in disguise trying to cash on illegal smuggling into England.
Monk, as Jimmy is called, is instrumental in getting Sylvester and Henry into all kinds of schemes that do not produce the money they live to survive. Monk decides to team with an old flame, Maudie, and tour the countryside in a sort of ill-conceived vaudeville act. The inane attempts of the quartet to amuse the local gentry signals the end of the group, but fate intervenes in the person of Michael Fane, who takes a fancy to Sylvia, when she throws away her Sylvester disguise.
As a comedy, "Sylvia Scarlett" was perhaps a naughty idea of the creators that probably did not get the audience it went after. Katherine Hepburn, deemed box-office poison, has some good moments in the comedy. A cockney speaking Cary Grant shows why he was going to go far in his American career. Others in the film include Brian Aherne, Dennie Moore, and Edmund Gwenn. George Cukor direction cannot hide the problems with the screen treatment it got.
The action takes place in more naive times, something that is hard to believe today's audiences would respond to the basic premise of the film. We are asked to believe that Sylvia comes to London impersonating a young man, following a good for nothing father. Jimmy Monkley, the man Henry Scarlett meets on board, turns out to be a rat in disguise trying to cash on illegal smuggling into England.
Monk, as Jimmy is called, is instrumental in getting Sylvester and Henry into all kinds of schemes that do not produce the money they live to survive. Monk decides to team with an old flame, Maudie, and tour the countryside in a sort of ill-conceived vaudeville act. The inane attempts of the quartet to amuse the local gentry signals the end of the group, but fate intervenes in the person of Michael Fane, who takes a fancy to Sylvia, when she throws away her Sylvester disguise.
As a comedy, "Sylvia Scarlett" was perhaps a naughty idea of the creators that probably did not get the audience it went after. Katherine Hepburn, deemed box-office poison, has some good moments in the comedy. A cockney speaking Cary Grant shows why he was going to go far in his American career. Others in the film include Brian Aherne, Dennie Moore, and Edmund Gwenn. George Cukor direction cannot hide the problems with the screen treatment it got.