Quality Street (1937)

You won't be disappointed!

A Masterpiece!

Simple and well acted, it has tension enough to knot the stomach.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

"Quality Street" from 1937 stars Katharine Hepburn, Franchot Tone, Fay Bainter, and Estelle Winwood. It's directed by George Stevens, who directed Hepburn later in Woman of the Year.Hepburn plays Phoebe Throssel, a lovely young woman living with her spinster sister (Bainter) and surrounded by other spinsters who are neighbors in 1800. Phoebe is in love with one man, Valentine Brown -- as is pointed out in the film, other men have come calling, but Phoebe didn't want them.Valentine, however, is off to the Napoleonic Wars. When he returns ten years later, Phoebe and her sister have opened a school in their home. Phoebe is embarrassed at being so exhausted and believes she has lost her looks. Nevertheless, Valentine wants her to attend the homecoming ball.Phoebe, trying to prove something to herself, puts on a fancy dress and does her hair differently. When Valentine arrives, she introduces herself as Olivia ("Livvie"), Phoebe's niece. She gives him Phoebe's regrets, but she doesn't feel well. The two attend the ball together, where Livvy is surrounded by men. She believes that she now has a chance of Valentine proposing to Livvy. If only she can stay away from people who can expose her.James Barrie wrote many plays that were performed by some of theater's biggest stars at the beginning of this century so it's no wonder Hollywood made it as a movie. It still retains many of its play-like qualities.The character actors -- Bainter, Winwood, Eric Blore, are wonderful. Tone is very handsome though he doesn't have much to do. Though some might disagree, I felt Hepburn was somewhat miscast. Her portrayal of Phoebe/Livvie, though energetic, feels "put on" rather than organic. She was a tremendously strong actress but pulls back here - it doesn't seem natural.The cast must have had a great deal of patience - Stevens, known as a very nice man, was known for having actors do 40 takes of one scene; it's one reason why Montgomery Clift never worked for him again after A Place in the Sun. He just didn't have the patience for it.This is a charming, light film that looks stagy, but that shouldn't hurt your enjoyment of it.

If you enjoy stories from the early 1800s you might like this movie. It's a mild example of the type--pleasant, with moments of funny lines and good acting, and nobody is really fooled by the woman posing as her own niece, just confused over the cover up. The friends are not dopes, and neither is her fella. At first he seems as if he has a cruel streak which is probably from a lack of experience with sensitive women after so many years in the military and the difference between his memory and the reality--he was used to the way HE had aged, but he comes across by the end as an exceptionally nice guy, a real catch, with a taste for daffy dames rather than the plump sweet young things he was supposed to favor. He joined in with the ridiculous plan with stylish conviction when he figured out what was going on.And of course Phoebe's mistake was being so hurt, and who wouldn't feel shocked when confronted by the knowledge that you have wasted your youth loving a man who thinks you are dowdy and unattractive and can't even recognize you when you are dressed up, that she decided to play this deception, likely because she read too much and lived too little to immediately see how foolish it was. It spiraled out of control because of her nosy neighbors who wouldn't allow her to merely send Livvy home and forget the whole thing. I have to think it did Phoebe's ego a world of good to be pursued so ardently by the soldiers! I'm sure when she got married her husband got to see both the restrained and capable school teacher and the goofy social butterfly in her from then on, which was probably a far better outcome than if everything had gone well from the start.Modern reviewers can't know what original audiences thought of these movies but Depression era viewers would certainly have had an acute understanding of what happened to a woman without a man in an era when a woman had no rights or protections. Many a Depression era woman decided to settle, as Phoebe's sister did, for her situation and become a confirmed spinster school teacher, a type that my father disliked as much as the man in this movie. (In the 30s US, if a woman married she lost her teaching job.) And teachers were paid so little in the Depression that they boarded in people's homes or got rooms with other teachers, in my mother's case with her sister as in this movie, enduring intense financial distress and societal restriction that could make a woman seem old before her time. There were many women in the 30s who became single, childless career women from necessity, just as there were after WWI and other wars around the world. There were so many single, childless women scratching out a living in Britain after WWI that there was a name for them and they had a little social world of their own. So I would say this movie would have been a lot more comprehensible to audiences in the Depression than to us.Hepburn was 30 when this came out. That was the right age for the story. In the 1930s, and in the early 1800s, 30 was NOT the new 20. 30 was well into maturity.

Someone said they liked this more than the overrated Philadelphia Story, now that might be a tiny bit over the top but I do adore this movie. I first saw it as child. The print was grainy and I could not get over the fact that one of the Miss Willoughby's looked like Marty Feldman in a dress. But it was pretty, pretty language, pretty clothes, pretty harmless people. As I learned more about the Napoleonic wars (and WWII that was just beginning a full boil as this movie was made) I gained a respect for the need for a palate cleanser such as this. It's acted in high style, a lite version of a French farce or Shakespeare at his most lighthearted.Regardless of the fluff there are sinews in this piece that make the fluff more satisfying. Dr. Brown leaves his love, not a potential starving widow but a pretty thing more likely to marry if he's killed. The Throssels, rather than starve, take students and do fairly well although the smell of old maid schoolteacher is beginning to tire them. Dr. Brown is gently teased that he has aged himself as he has to compete for "Livvy's" attentions and he is lightly chastised for his inability to realize that 10 years must age his sweetheart. The herd of widows and old maids are not the cruel destructive soured bitter things they might have been but rather just a little catty and too nosy. They are the gatekeepers of morality in fantasy land. The way Dr. Brown rips down the school sign and gentle accepts responsibility for Susan displays a knowledge of the peril in which unmarried poor women stood in the early part of the 19th Century. And finally, love makes even an old maid lovely.This is a perfect movie when you're feeling bruised by life and the extremes of overly produced films.

Delightful comedy of errors. Pheobe (Hepburn) is in love with the dashing Dr. Brown, but alas her love is unrequited. They meet again 10 years later on his return from the Napoleonic Wars. She has wilted under the strain of teaching little children and is self-conscious about her age. On a whim she decides to dress in her former radiant style, and ends up being mistaken by Dr. Brown for Pheobe's niece. They start to court, and from there it's all silly and predictable, but... sparkling dialogue, great acting and wonderful supporting parts (especially the nosy old spinsters at the windows)