Katharine Hepburn: A Woman of the Years – Molly Haskell moderated by Imogen Sara Smith

 

Katharine Hepburn.

Il Cinema Ritrovato, Bologna 2025: Katharine Hepburn: A Woman of the Years. 

Auditorium – DAMSLab, 22 June 2025.

Molly Haskell (Bologna catalogue 2025): "As a tomboy living in a conventional place and time – the South in the 1950s – and resisting ladyhood, I was wonderstruck by Katharine Hepburn. She managed to exude self-sufficiency, a furious independence, even when in love. Probably I didn't catch up with her 1930s and 1940s films until later, but I'd seen enough of her to become a fan."

"One day I was discussing her with my mother (I was semi-adult by now, maybe on my way to college), and she said, "You know your father never liked Katharine Hepburn." At first I was shocked. How could anybody... ? Then I thought about it. Of course. My father, like many men and not just of his generation, didn't like independent women. It was an epiphany, both sad and exhilarating. I loved my father, but, I realized, our paths had diverged. I was headed in a different direction, one he might not like either."

"The stars in the classic era – the 1930s through the 1950s – were hugely influential in shaping our direction. We picked snatches of Audrey Hepburn's androgynous grace, Doris Day's plucky resilience. Katharine Hepburn was of another era, but her star still shone brightly into ours. Hepburn was her own person, but what did that mean? Could she belong to herself and to a man as well? She came from a free-thinking New England family, her mother a suffragette. She was her own protest movement, every gesture an assertion if independence, of women's rights. She could be strident, (the price she and we pay) but now we can accept her more easily, be grateful that she behaved rebelliously, wore trousers (shockingly!) when no other women did."

"Despite the slings and arrows of 'box-office poison' and accusations that she always played herself, Hepburn won a record-making four Academy Awards and received 12 Oscar nominations for Best Actress (a number surpassed only by Meryl Streep). I chose the films I loved best rather than the crowd-pleasers of her later years when she had become something of an institution. She could be quite wonderful, as in Long Day's Journey into Night (Sidney Lumet, 1962), but it's more a play than a film."

"As someone who has seen and reseen her film I thought I knew everything about her persona. I was wrong. Revisiting the films has been something of a revelation, a major one being Christopher Strong, her second film and her first starring role. Made for RKO, this pre-Code film was long considered an oddity, even 'camp.' Seeing it again after many years, I was astonished to find that it now looks like a classic. Hepburn has never been more beautiful, nor more radiant as her own women – and never has her renunciation of independence felt more wrenching." Molly Haskell (Bologna catalogue 2025)

Molly Haskell (Bologna online 2025): "There were peaks and valleys during Katharine Hepburn’s career—an Oscar winner one minute, “Box Office Poison” the next. In her case, the latter was a consequence of her always striking and sometimes controversial personality. She wore trousers and exuded a feminist vibe (her mother was a Suffragette) before most people were ready for it. The New England accent sometimes grated, but she was bold and “out there” in a way few women were—exhilarating, physically nimble, androgyne and lady rolled into one. There was a reason her career spanned 67 years and boasted a still-record number of Best Actress Oscar nominations (12) and wins (4). Her career was more varied than she’s given credit for but it’s especially her screwball comedies (of which there’s a touch in all her best work) that she shines. Unique and irreplaceable, we are able to appreciate in our own time this woman who was so ahead of hers." Molly Haskell (Bologna online 2025)

AA: I had a ticket to the unique screening of Lewis Milestone's The Garden of Eden, but then I did the right thing and went instead to the Auditorium – DAMSLab to visit something even more unique: Molly Haskell's dialogue with Imogen Sara Smith on Katharine Hepburn. The place was packed. The discourse was so engaging that I failed to take notes. It was simply so wonderful that I just wanted to enjoy every second.

Molly Haskell's From Reverence to Rape (1974, revised 1987 and 2016) has been a keywork to me since the 1970s when I wrote my first book, on Marilyn Monroe. In 1980 I bought a copy of my own and read it even more thoroughly. During my trip to Bologna I reread that copy. I realized that I must now get the 2016 edition, but it is not for sale in Bologna.

Meanwhile, I have seen Delphine Seyrig's feminist milestone movie Sois belle et tais-toi (Be Pretty and Shut Up, produced in 1978, released in 1981), which seems to me as the movie to Haskell's book.

Both keep growing in significance. It is about equality, it is about fair play, and it is about something absolutely fundamental.

There is not one without the other. When one is abused or misrepresented, both suffer. 

We don't see ourselves in the mirror but in the other person. It takes two. Both need to be independent. Otherwise the other is reduced to a mirror.

Socrates in the Symposium confessed that he had learned everything from Diotima. 

We don't know who we are and where we are going. Life is a journey to the unknown. Art is one of our best means to make sense of it. Great spirits such as Katharine Hepburn and Molly Haskell are our lighthouses.