Forbes Town

Mary of Scotland [VHS]

Reviews

Rating: 4 / 5
Date: 2009-08-31
Summary: "good period piece"

This movie tell us about the live of Mary Stuart. Just because she was a queen don't think her life was perfect. It wasn't. She had to marry men she did not love, one was nuts, & was not allow to be with the man she did love. As usual Katharing Hepburn is great. If you like period pieces you will like this movie. There is a lot of violence in it also.

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Rating: 5 / 5
Date: 2005-07-04
Summary: "a little slow but still really good"

I love movies about this period & Katharine Hepburn.

it is a old movie & you can tell but Ms.Hepburn is wonderful in it. She tries to take back her country but everyone is fighting her. They make her marry a man who she doesn't love & who is no good. Of course it doesn't work. They kill her best friend & go after her lover.

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Rating: 5 / 5
Date: 2005-02-07
Summary: "Lavish historical drama!"


Somehow this film was the essential Op. 1 which gave to Katherine Hepburn her first big step in the rise of her successful career. After returning from France to rule fairly and justly immersed in the seductive smell of the words, she will taste the power's honey and once more you will convince the enormous distance between the theory and the practice.
The art of governing as Disraeli affirmed, is not logic and has not nothing to do with good intentions. Additionally Nietszche stated: Any man who funds a Republic and doesn't kill Brutus or even doesn't kill to Brutus sons, will just rule a brief period. Forget the innocence in politics. It is word that simply doesn't exist in its dictionary.

One of the most intelligent and artistic films of John Ford who was a masterful director not only in Western films.

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Rating: 4 / 5
Date: 2003-05-15
Summary: "Katharine Heburn as Mary, Mary, quite contrary"

One of my favorite stories about the absurd way that Hollywood thinks is that in the 1936 film "Mary of Scotland" starring Katharine Hepburn as Mary Stuart, her leading man Fredric March plays the Earl of Bothwell, whose real family name was Hepburn. But since Katharine Hepburn was a direct descendant, it would have been wrong to use the name in the film and suggest the actress was having a love affair with an ancestor. You just cannot make reasoning like this up in your spare time.

Directed by John Ford, this costume drama begins in 1561 when Mary Staurt returned to Scotland from France as the Queen of the Scots. Elizabeth Tudor (Florence Eldridge), Queen of England, feared the threat that the Catholic Stuarts presented to the English throne. Consequently, "Mary of Scotland" is a story of political brinkmanship during the Elizabethan period. Mary tries to strengthen her position by marrying the weak Darnley (Douglas Walton), and putting Bothwell in the position of being her protector. She gives birth to a son James (later King James VI of Scotland and King James I of Great Britain), but Darnley betrays her to the Scottish chiefs in an effort to rule the kingdom and is killed. Mary's marriage to Bothwell inflames the Scots even more. Bothwell leaves the country and Mary is imprisoned by the Scottish lords. Smuggled out of prision, Mary flees to England and seeks sanctuary from Elizabeth.

"Mary of Scotland" is based on Maxwell Anderson's play, which had Helen Hayes in the title role on Broadway, although the original blank verse is eliminated by Dudley Nichols's script. The chief attraction of this bio pic is the final confrontation between Mary her cousin Elizabeth. Anderson is one of several dramatists who could not accept the historical fact that the two queens never met, simply because the idea of that confrontation is too good to give up. Under Ford's direction the film is much more about spectacle than history, and there is a nice scene when Bothwell brings in a horde of bagpipes to drown out the religious rants of John Knox (Moroni Olson). Many scenes are shot at night, to provide a somber tone to the story of Mary's descent and death.

Hepburn has some trouble with the Scottish accent, as she would throughout her career whenever she tried to do something that covered up her distinctive speaking voice. However, it is the very idea of being a hapless queen that runs against the very persona of Hepburn as an independent woman. If you contrast the performance and the character from this film with her celebrated Oscar winning role as Eleanor of Aquitaine in "The Lion in Winter," you can easily see the differences on both scores. This is the most lavish of the costume dramas Hepburn did for RKO, as well as the most historical, despite the noted attempts at dramatic license. The result is okay, but not great, which is what you would expect from a film that brought Ford, Hepburn, and March together.

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Rating: 3 / 5
Date: 2002-03-24
Summary: "STORYBOOK HISTORICAL SAGA."

Mary was/is many a school-girl's heroine and her story is well-known. Mary, onetime consort of the young French king, who had died prematurely, comes to Auld Caledonia, where she is the rightful monarch. To the south, her cousin Elizabeth, Queen of England, fears the threat the Scottish queen represents, as she is next in line for the English throne. Mary, a Catholic, runs up against the Protestant leaders and the power-hungry, recalcitrant lords. To insure the succession to the throne and enhance her position, Mary married the weakling Lord Darnley whom she does not love.....Helen Hayes had played Mary to great acclaim on Broadway; while this picture will never go down in the books as one of the all-time greats, it did, however, display Hepburn's arresting and distictive personality in a role that called upon all her acting resources - and she revealed herself as an actress of greater range than was previously believed. Ford gave the film careful directorial handling, and it was handsomely mounted in all departments. March garnered excellent reviews as the bold and dashing Bothwell. Both Bette Davis and Ginger Rogers (!) fought for the role of Elizabeth I which was ultimately given to Florence Eldridge (Mrs. March) who did a commendable if not brilliant job playing Good Queen Bess.