Cinema: The New Pictures: Nov. 9, 1936

(3 of 3)

The second half of A Woman Rebels concerns Pam's daring contradiction of the Victorian dictum that ladies should not work. She runs a magazine that campaigns for women's rights. Meantime, she nurses a long-frustrated love for a sympathetic diplomat (Herbert Marshall). When Pam's daughter (Doris Dudley), matured into a skinny young woman with 1936 posture, falls in love with the son of the man who wronged her mother, it is a blessing in disguise. To save her from incest, Pam reveals the truth about her origin, clears the air by marrying her diplomat.

Marked by none of the vitality of its predecessors in Katharine Hepburn's Victorian series, A Woman Rebels is saved from complete mediocrity by her well-modulated performance and by the admirable feeling for background and atmosphere implicit in Mark Sandrich's direction. Good shot : the inevitable altercation, on her first visit to Mme Tussaud's, between Pamela and a wax policeman.