The pathetic, social-climbing heroine of Booth Tarkington's novel was never better played than by Hepburn, who brought a fierce determination, clutching coyness, and tragic optimism to the part.
Comment
11/13/07
Alice Adams (1935)
93 %
Reviews Counted: 15 Fresh: 14 Rotten:1 Average Rating: 7.8/10
Runtime: 1 hr 40 mins
Synopsis: George Stevens' adaptation of BoothTarkington's Pulitzer Prize-winning 1921 novel, and his breakthrough film, stars Katherine Hepburn in the title role. A pretty young woman who dreams of reaching beyond her middle-class origins, Alice attends a party being hosted by Mildred Palmer... [More]
Genre: Dramas
Starring: Katharine Hepburn, Fred MacMurray, Fred Stone, Frank Albertson, Hedda Hopper
Director: George Stevens
Screenwriter: Dorothy Yost, Mortimer Offner, Jane Murfin
Producer: Pandro S. Berman
Composer: Max Steiner
Screenwriter: Dorothy Yost, Mortimer Offner, Jane Murfin
Producer: Pandro S. Berman
Composer: Max Steiner
Reviews
1 - 15 (sorted by date; Australian critics are listed first)
That George Stevens' direction captures the wistfulness of Katharine Hepburn's superb histrionism, and yet has not sacrificed audience values at the altar of too much drabness and prosaic realism, is an achievement of no small order.
11/13/07
Top Critic
Stevens's talent for stepping away from the plotline and creating intimate, casual, and naturalistic moments is given plenty of opportunity here, as it would not be in his later superproductions.
11/13/07
George Stevens' poignant adaptation of the Tarkington famous novel is one of the few Ameriacn films of its era to examine the impact of social class in a realistic way.
07/28/07
An oddly exciting blend of tenderness, comedy and realistic despair, it touches life intimately at many points during its account of a lonely girl in a typical American small town.
03/25/06
Top Critic
Hepburn is magnificent as the small-town social climber, although the script so softens Booth Tarkington's novel.
02/09/06
There's much humor that comes out of the believable characters portrayed and the pain they suffer from their plight.
08/10/05
Alice Adams would be forgotten if it weren't for Hepburn's typically charismatic performance as the woman who turns social climbing into an art form.
05/24/03
Alice Adams (1935) is RKO's touching, effectively poignant portrayal of small-town, mid-Western American pretenses
01/01/00
1 - 15 (sorted by date; Australian critics are listed first)
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