Tied for the best movie I have ever seen

A Disappointing Continuation

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

I didn’t really have many expectations going into the movie (good or bad), but I actually really enjoyed it. I really liked the characters and the banter between them.

A Woman Rebels is mostly a historical film with substance, but all together unendearing.Hepburn carries the film, but it is lacking in many areas. Every character other than Pamela was rather one-dimensional and didn't add much of anything.

"A Woman Rebels" was a big money loser when it debuted. I think much of it was because it was a very strongly feminist film...even by 1936's standards...and most folks weren't ready to see a movie with such modern sensibilities...especially the notion of a single woman having a baby.The movie is set during the mid-late Victorian era. Pamela (Katharine Hepburn) and her sister Flora have a father (Donald Crisp) who is extremely cold, detached and loveless. He also is angry because Pamela wants more out of life than was typical of a woman of the day. She wants to read, educate herself and be something other than just a dutiful wife...and he is determined to marry her off like her sister. However, Pamela falls for a rogue and soon finds herself pregnant. To hide this, she goes to stay with Flora...and when Flora's husband dies as does Flora, Pamela pretends that her new baby is her sister's. She also does the unthinkable...she gets a job and eventually becomes a very modern and emancipated lady.This is a very well made film but as I said the notion of a single mother must have not sat well with folks. Worth seeing and among the actress's better early films.

Apart from a wonderful plot, superb acting from Katherine Hepburn, Herbert Marshall as a charming leading man, as a historical film costumer, this one goes on my A-list.I've only seen about 3/4 of the film -- caught it on Turner classic movies channel and got hooked. Don't know what the costuming in the early part of the flick was like, but from the time I tuned in, which covered the mid to late 1860s through the 1890s, I was VERY impressed.The 1930s and 40's "golden age of Hollywood" was not a particularly good era for accurate costuming in film -- the artistic/visual impact generally seemed to trump any concerns about authenticity. And the 50s, 60's and 70's got broadly worse.This film stands out from the 1930's crop BIG time.The 1865-1870 period is difficult to get right and is seldom portrayed -- elliptical hoops, small bonnets, tailored details -- all presaging the "first bustle era" of the early 70's but not yet at the bustle stage. Costume Designer Walter Plunkett gets it right and designed some lovely, authentic gowns. The film seems to flash forward pretty rapidly to the late 1870's to early 1880s "natural form" era and then the 1890s, so both bustle eras are missed out, but the periods he covers, he does RIGHT.Ironically, this is the same Walter Plunkett famous for his gorgeous, yet woefully inaccurate costumes for Vivian Leigh in Gone With the Wind -- however, if you look at that film, the costuming for Melanie Wilkes and the supporting & background women is actually pretty good, as are the various male civilian outfits. Alas, the stuff that's most remembered is the stuff that's wrong - Scarlett's clothes and the godawful uniforms. Suggests to me that the great Plunkett richly deserved his reputation, DID understand historical costuming and must have been working to some broader artistic judgement call on the part of either the director / production designer or producers on GWTW.With no such constraints on "A Woman Rebels", he did a phenomenal job.-- Kathryn Coombs Historical Wardrobe, Ltd Historical Entertainment, LLC

The sins of the father shall be visited upon his children, and upon his children's children. Katharine Hepburn plays a woman who was a bright, curious child whose father stymied that curiosity because she was "just a girl". Later in life, Hepburn's illegitimate daughter, whom she raises as her niece, is a bright, curious child, whose curiosity Hepburn stymies whenever said curiosity would reveal her illegitimacy. There's wonderful hypocrisy at work in Hepburn's character, but the film absolutely fails in addressing the issue. Very disappointing.Also infuriating is the handling of the character of the father, who is strict and regimented at the beginning of the film and is reduced to being a near-weeping milksop, comforted by and comforting his loving daughter, near the end. Where was he during the raising of his granddaughter? Were I Hepburn, I wouldn't let him near her, but if that's the case, how did they become reconciled by the end? It makes no sense.